Gramophone
much high publicity as hi-fi.
The Second World War (1939–45) cut non-
military use of shellac, the material for the discs
and principally imported from India, thus record
production was severely curtailed. 1944 saw
the fi rst examples of Decca’s ‘ff rr’ sound reach-
ing British ears. Th is was ‘full frequency range
reproduction’ achieving standards of reproduc-
tion never previously heard.
In 1941, 127 million discs were sold; in 1947,
400 million, a year before Columbia Records in
the US launched the unbreakable microgroove
disc, with a playing time of 23 minutes per side.
Th e LP (Long Playing) Record had arrived. It
bore between 224 and 300 grooves per inch
compared to 85 grooves on the ordinary disc;
and it moved on the turntable at 33⅓rpm instead
of the traditional 78. Not to be outdone, RCA
Victor hit back with the 45rpm record, thus
beginning the so-called Battle of the Speeds,
diminishing trade in what turned out to be
a period of consumer uncertainty. It was the
period too when recording by magnetic tape was
rapidly expanding. Neither ousted the other: in
fact they proved complementary and expanded
together in the dynamic growth period of Rock
and Roll and the radio disc jockey.
Stereophonic sound, or ‘two-eared listening’,
had been possible since the Bell Laboratories
had put on binaural demonstrations at the
Chicago World’s Fair of 1933, and Walt Disney’s
fi lm Fantasia (1940) showed the possibilities of
multi-source music reproduction in a cinema.
The stereo effect was caught first on high-
quality magnetic tape. Th en in 1957 the Westrex
Company devised a successful method of
putting two stereo channels into a single groove.
By September of the following year every major
record company in the US was off ering stereo
discs for sale.
Th e tape cassette emerged from Philips who
demonstrated its potential at the 1963 Berlin
Radio Show. They improved it substantially
and in 1970 along came the Dolby system, just
at the time when tape machines were becoming
popular as in-car entertainment.
An innovation in gramophone technology
which never quite caught on was Quadrophony,
using four speakers rather than two, the addi-
tional channels intended to convey ‘ambient’
sound – fractionally delayed impulses refl ected
from the rear of the recording hall. Digital
recording is now standard and the CD (Compact
Disc) dominates the music market. However,
vinyl is by no means a spent force; vinyl records
are still manufactured, fulfilling the demandsand Women’s Talk: Th e Pleasure of Resistance
(Sage, 1994). Brown discusses how gossip
networks arise out of viewing soap opera, and
the use of such entertainment as a means of
constructing alternative meanings. Th e author
asks, ‘How can such a trivial or even exploitative
genre as soap opera be associated with the
notion of empowerment for its viewers?’ She
responds to the question by arguing that the
answer ‘lies in the invisible discourse networks
it plugs into and helps solidify. Such discourse
networks, or gossip networks, are important for
women’s resistive pleasure’.
Gramophone Originally the Phonograph,
invented by Th omas Alva Edison (1847–1931),
his fi rst sketch of which was published in the
Scientific American, 22 December 1877. His
‘talking tinfoil’ led to the creation in 1878 of the
Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, and
soon a single exhibition phonograph could earn
as much as US 1,800 a week. Concurrently
Edison designed different models including a
disc machine with a volute spiral that anticipated
later developments.
Commercial recordings began in 1890, though
sound reproduction remained poor, the wax
cylinders could only play for two minutes and
there was no way of mass-producing them.
Machines were driven by cumbersome, heavy-
duty batteries and were very expensive to
purchase, that is until Th omas Hood Macdonald,
a manager of Graphophone, rival company to
Edison’s, put on sale the fi rst mechanical phono-
graph (1894), retailing at US 75.
The Columbia company were the first to
manufacture double-sided discs (1908), though
the next major innovation was electrical record-
ing, initiated by Lionel Guest and H.O. Merri-
men in 1920 when they recorded, by electrical
process, the Unknown Warrior burial service in
Westminster Abbey. Bell Laboratories in the US
proved substantial pioneers in this area, which
they termed orthophonic recording.
Th e miraculous rise of the gramophone was
eventually hit by the more popular mass appeal
of radio and the 1930s were lean years, though
the record industry in Europe did not plumb the
depths to the extent it did in the US where, by
January 1933, the record business was practically
extinct. However, in September 1934, the RCA
Victor sales department off ered the Duo Junior,
consisting of an electrically powered turntable
and a magnetic pickup, primitive but popular;
and by 1935 the notion of ‘high-fi delity’ was born.
Station W2XR (later WQXR) in New York began
‘high-fi delity broadcasting’ in 1934, in truth, as