A Look at the History of Vinyl Records
The word “Vinyl” refers to the substance used to make records. Polyvinyl chloride, or vinyl, is a synthetic plastic created during the early 1900s as part of the plastics boom and is formed of ethylene and chlorine. Material scientists were continually experimenting with synthetic polymers, which appeared to outperform wood, glass, leather, ceramic, and metal in various ways.
In working on two of his most famous inventions (the telephone and the telegraph), Thomas Edison created the phonograph in 1877. The phonograph was a device that allowed one to listen to recorded sounds. Edison claimed in the June 1878 issue of North American Review that he saw the device’s future uses including “reproduction of music,” “dictation,” “teaching,” and “telling time.” During the 1880s, the Volta Laboratory, led by Alexander Graham Bell, improved Edison’s designs and named it the gramophone. Unlike the phonograph, the gramophone revolved around a hard rubber disc on a flat plate, which reads sound from a wax cylinder.
While the substance “vinyl” was not created until the 1900s, Emile Berliner, a German-born American inventor, invented the first record player, the gramophone, in 1887. This gadget required manual operation and worked by spinning a 7-inch rubber vulcanite disc with tiny lateral grooves carved into its exterior.
Vinyl records underwent a series of material and formatting adjustments over the next decade until the Victor Company produced their Red Seal line in 1901, which could play vinyl recordings in the form of 10-inch, 78 RPM records. For the next 47 years, the 78 RPM format proved to be the most outstanding in terms of structure.
CBS released the world’s first extended play (LP) record in 1948. This vinyl record, designed by Peter Goldmark, had a capacity of roughly 21 minutes per side, was 12 inches wide, and played at a speed of 33 1/3 RPM. This shifted the music industry’s focus to the album structure that is adopted today. Subsequently, RCA Victor released their own 45 RPM LP, which was just seven inches long and turned at 45 RPM.
Vinyl records (also known as lacquer discs) have grooved indentations. The sounds generated from the original artist recording are “fingerprinted” in these grooves. You put a record on a record player, which has a rotating base and a long, thin tonearm, to play it. At the end of the tonearm is a cartridge with a stylus. The stylus vibrates in the record’s grooves while the record player rotates.
When the stylus vibrates in the grooves, an electric signal is generated and sent through the cartridge. This signal is then sent to the amplifier on the record player. The stylus advances from the outer border of the record to the center while it plays, giving each side 20 to 30 minutes of music.
The Sony Walkman, created by Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka, was released in 1979 and had the same impact on the music business as the first record player. The Walkman revolutionized music listening. Using magnetic cassette technology (cassette tapes), you could listen to music while on the go, anywhere. Within five years of the Walkman’s introduction, cassette tapes had surpassed vinyl record sales, and within a couple of years, vinyl record sales reached an all-time low.
