1948 : Columbia Records place the acerate leaf down on history ’s first successful microgroove charge plate , 12 - column inch , 33 - 1/3 LPs in New York , sparking a euphony - industry touchstone so firm that the digital age has yet to kill it .
Columbia engineerPeter Carl Goldmarkset out with his stave in 1939 to evolve the 78 - rpm phonograph record forward to 33 - 1/3 rev , protract playback time to more than 20 minutes per side , and shrink vinyl grooves to an approachable , acceptable millimeter size .
Before that prison term , music labels , including Columbia and RCA Victor , had neglect to set in motion commercially successful 33 - 1/3 records to marketplace , for various grounds . Although RCA Victor debut the firstcommercially available vinyl radical long - playerdesigned for playback at 33 - 1/3 in 1931 , the Great Depression shelved that ambitious project in 1933 .
“ When I became ecumenical manager of the Victor Division of RCA on July 1 , 1933 , my first act was to take them off the market place , ” American Records Corporation presidentEdward Wallerstein explain . “ Most of the records were made from Victorlac , a vinyl compound [ and ] the cartridge available at that time were so heavy they just cut through the stuff after several manoeuvre . The complaints from customers all over the U.S. were so terrific that we were forced to withdraw the LP . ”
Columbia bring out 33 - 1/3 10 - inchers , but cursorily phased them out in 1932 , thanks to likewise madden proficient difficulty . The commercial public would not be able to down and listen to sturdier , lengthier LPs for another 15 years . First , it had to deal with political and economic misery .
The Great Depression and World War II slacken everything down , includingGoldmark ’s team and its microgroove innovations . But once the war ended , the record business boom , pulling in more than $ 10 million in sale by 1945 . Cue the hand clapping caterpillar track .
When Columbia was last free from geopolitical battle and able to address the LP ’s previous technical difficulties – pickups that were too heavy , groove that were too wide , playback clip that were too poor , and audio fidelity that was too stinking – everything changed .
“ Goldmark assigned individual researchers to single problems : cutting - motor and stylus plan , pickup excogitation , turntable design , amplifier , radius equalization,”Martin Mayer wrotein a history of the LP published by High Fidelity Magazine in 1958 . “ The 33 - 1/3 focal ratio had been install before employment began , and it already had become clear that a very narrow groove , something like the .003 inch channel lastly adopted , would be necessary to immortalise 22 minutes of medicine to a side . ”
Eventual Columbia presidentGoddard Liebersonintroduced the label ’s masterful LP development at the Waldorf - Astoria Hotel in 1948 , and the commercially availablelong - play record travel supernova . Eventually , Columbia copyrighted the term LPoutright , denying other labels recourse to apply a ubiquitous industriousness buzzword to commercialize their individual releases .
remind the laugh track .
Source : Various
Photo : The first microgroove LP pressing released was Columbia ML4001 , the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor with soloist Nathan Milstein , and Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York . Courtesy 33audio.com
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