Past notes: vinyl
How did we listen to music before the advent of vinyl?
By playing it. At the end of the 19th century, every home that could afford one had a piano. If a family wanted to hear the latest song or music, they would buy the sheet music and perform it at home. The advent of the wireless would eventually bring music into most homes, but the obvious attraction of having recorded music was that it enabled you to select the piece of music you wanted to listen to at a time of your choice.
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, which recorded sound on first tinfoil- coated and then wax cylinders that could be played back immediately. Edison continued producing his cylinders until 1929, but by then they had long been supplanted by Emile Berliner’s gramophone system, which used flat discs and took off in popularity in the years before the First World War.
Were these discs made of vinyl?
No. They were initially made of zinc. However, the commonest material soon became a compound based on shellac, a resin secreted by the female lac bug. These records produced a better sound quality but were brittle and heavy. They remained in production until the 1950s.
How did vinyl take off?
Vinyl’s growth was largely due to the Second World War, when the US armed forces produced great quantities of ‘V-Discs’ for troops overseas. These 12-inch singles were made of vinyl as it was lighter and more flexible, and therefore much easier to transport. One of the most famous was V-Disc 39A, ‘Moonlight Serenade’, by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, which was produced in November 1943. The advantages of vinyl soon became obvious, and at the end of the war the commercial production of vinyl records rapidly expanded. Vinyl would then dominate sales until 1988, when CDs outsold records for the first time.
What was the first vinyl album to be produced?
Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, which was performed by the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, conducted by Bruno Walter, and released 70 years ago this year, in 1948.