[78-L] Approximating 78s age by physical characteristics

[Michael Shoshani]

On 03/04/2013 02:27 AM, Michael Biel wrote:
> Trying to catch up on two points.  I capitalized New Process because
> this was a new advertised feature for Columbia in 1923, and coincided
> with the flag label.  You will see this advertised on the sleeves. BUT
> as someone said, the blue and gold Columbias were also laminated.  There
> might have been some kind of change at the factory at that point, or
> maybe this denoted the use of a higher quality surface shellac.

When I get a chance, I'll go through my archive of sent mail. I rather 
excitedly sent to Dr. Biel some links to Google Patents; in exploring 
the concept of lamination, I found that Columbia (and American 
Graphophone) had actually begun patent applications as early as, if I 
recall correctly, 1903. But it seems to have taken several years of 
experimentation before they got it down to their satisfaction.

The kicker in these was the process itself; rather than Victor's method 
of a solid biscuit that was then heated and kneaded around into a 
puttylike mass, the constituents of the Columbia laminated process never 
went through a heat-and-knead process. The solid core was made of clay 
and other heavy materials; to it was affixed a paper disc that had been 
laminated with the fine shellac mixture for the surface. The two layers 
(three when double-sided pressings became the norm) were fused together 
under heat and pressure in the hydraulic press that also imprinted the 
record groove and label.

Michael Shoshani
Chicago