What was the last 78 rpm record

The B-side is a pleasant, swinging shuffle. Page 1 Page 2 … Page 13 Next page. American 78s — The Last Year. Create a free website or blog at WordPress. Follow Following. American 78s - The Last Year. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Around the turn of the century, record companies or soon-to-be record companies were trying to design the perfect material to produce these new sound recordings on.

Enter, the female lac bug. Lac bugs, or kerria lacca , are scaly bugs that secrete lac onto trees. This resin can be scraped off, dissolved in alcohol, and reformed into liquid shellac. Shellac is easier to scratch than metal, and it resists moisture, making it an ideal candidate for music records.

Despite this one fatal flaw, shellac was the main material source until vinyl came around in the s. A lot happened over that time period, and it all began in with the first ten-inch shellac record, spun at 78 revolutions per minute. This is due to the modern engines at the time that would create these discs. A rpm motor running with a standard tooth gear, do the math and you get roughly 78 revolutions per minute. The length of each record was barely able to fit an entire song, and some songs had to be finished by flipping the record to the other side.

For almost fifty years, 78s were the go-to record speed. These new records could hold a mind-boggling twenty minutes per side. During this time, new materials developed, and recording processes advanced.

Some notable progressions were:. Suddenly in , the public was hit with records that contained full-length albums. Entire rock concerts jammed into two sides of a vinyl record. With tighter grooves and a slower spin rate, the 33rpm records left the 78s in the dust. And in , the last US-made 78 record was produced. Not all sales went directly over to 33s, however.

Jukeboxes, for example, still preferred 78s due to their single-song use. This sparked the creation of a new record only a year after Columbia released 33s. These 7-inch records could hold about minutes of recording on each side, perfect for a single song. With a higher quality than 78s, these records quickly took over the market, outselling even the 33rpm LPs. At this point, consumers had three choices of speeds. And even they much like people today were wondering, what's the difference between 33, 45, and 78 records?

From to around , vinyl records be they 33 LPs or 45 singles were the dominant music choice by consumers. During this time, more surges in technology came about. There was one other invention in that struck at the heart of vinyl records. This term did not come into use until after World War II when a need developed to distinguish the 78 from other newer disc record formats. Earlier they were just called records, or when there was a need to distinguish them from cylinders, disc records.

The durations of 78 RPM recordings is about three to five minutes per side, depending on the disc size: 12": ca. The older 78 format continued to be mass produced alongside the newer formats into the s, but had faded from the scene by Before , all 78s were recorded by means of the artist singing or speaking into a horn, the power of their voice directly vibrating the recording stylus and thus cutting the wax of the master disc.

Collectors call these discs "acoustic" recordings. The earliest methods of sound recording are described as "acoustical" and employ only mechanical means for both recording and playback. The sounds to be preserved are directed into a large horn, which at its tapered end is connected to a cutting stylus.

In response to the vibrations of air in the horn, the stylus cuts a spiral groove in the thick wax coating of a cylinder or disc, rotated steadily by means of a crank. The cutting process creates variations in the groove analogous to the varying frequency and amplitude of the vibrations; the stylus moves up and down in "hill-and-dale" or "vertical cut" recording and from side to side in "lateral cut" recording.

Edison's Diamond Discs were available in 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 21 inch formats. They were played at around 78 rpm and contained up to 8 minutes of sound. The disc was made of an early plastic known as Amberol, which "gave it little surface noise and superb clarity, [but] was incompatible with any other system. It employed a vertical, rather than lateral cut, groove and could not be played on any other machine. Recording and playing speeds ranged from 72 to 86 rpm before the standard settled at 78 though Columbia, for example, issued 80 rpm discs for some time after