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Figure 8. RCA's revolutionary record changer (1949) for “singles.” This type of record has a cross section with the area (27) so thick that the recorded surfaces (28) outside do not touch when they are stacked on the changing mechanism (82). The next record falls down when one side has been played by means of the pickup (42). From Carson (1953).
This whole development was dependent on the upsurge in magnetic recording because magnetic tape was used for ed- iting LP sides. That is, however, a different story.
Toward the end of our period of interest, the stereo record took over the market (Bachman et al., 1962; Hilliard, 1962). Stereo had been introduced in a two-channel consumer reel- to-reel tape format, but the ease of handling of the LP dis- placed it. But even the LP was overtaken by a new format that was easier to use in practice, the magnetic tape com- pact cassette, sometimes called the MusiCassette. The break- through of this medium that merely required loading a cas- sette and pushing a play button occurred in the late 1960s.
Conclusions
Looking at commercial sound recording and reproduction, we can see that it was always dependent on a huge support- ing industry for its components. It was a broad spectrum of contributing industries that was able to evolve from a simple start. Even though present-day sound recording and repro- duction activities may amount to little more than finding suitable acoustic spaces and moving computer files repre- senting the sound, this is also very dependent on support- ing industries, including a very specialized semiconductor manufacturing base.
Biosketch
George Brock-Nannestad graduated with a degree in signal processing in 1971, focusing on musical acoustics. With public funding from 1981 to 1986, he carried out the project “The Estab- lishment of Objective Criteria for Cor- rect Reproduction of Historical Sound
Recordings.” From 1991 to 1998, he was responsible for the Media area at the School of Conservation in Copenhagen. Presently, he researches and consults on sound restoration and audiovisual technology history. He was a regular con- tributor to the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music from 2004 to 2009 and contrib- uted chapters to The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Mu- sic (2009) and The Art of Record Production (2012).
records at 45 rpm together with an extremely fast record changer. The mechanism is shown in Figure 8. The records were made in a way that scratching did not occur when plac- ing them in a stack (see Figure 8, top).
In the consumer market, the large sector, popular music, quickly transferred from 10-in. (25-cm-diameter) shellac to 7-in. vinyl (the “single”), and the LP took the market for “serious” music. As the market developed, popular music compilations of singles could be found on LPs, with a differ- ent balance and level commensurate with the more expen- sive disc phonographs used for LPs. Only much later did the practice develop that a popular music group would première an “album” (in reality merely an LP), from which certain in- dividual numbers would subsequently be made available as singles.
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