Have you ever wondered about the history behind that vinyl record spinning on your turntable? Well, today, you are in for a treat. That’s what we’re here to look at – the history of vinyl records and the so-called “vinyl revival”.
Like most stories, it’s best to start at the beginning. In this case, we have to travel back to the year 1857. That’s the year French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville patented his device called the phonautograph.
Sound fascinated Scott, and he obsessed over ways to capture it. His invention allowed Scott to collect sound waves through a horn attached to a diaphragm and stylus. The result was a series of scribbles on paper. Think of the scribbles like a primitive waveform. Scott never intended for these to be played back, but over 150 years later, they were. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were able to convert these scribbles into a digital audio file. The results are chilling. The oldest recorded human voice singing the French song ‘Au clair de la lune’.
Check this out. You’ll have to listen carefully.
Jump forward twenty years to July 18, 1877. This was the date that Thomas Edison and his team revealed his phonograph to the world. It wasn’t like anything you’ve seen today. This recording and playback machine was manual, in the sense that you had to turn a crank which turned a grooved metal cylinder. It captured the sounds on a thin sheet of foil wrapped around the cylinder.
It was cool, but not Edison’s principal focus at the time, that being the electric lightbulb. So, while a big jump ahead when compared to scribbles on paper, Edison pretty much left his early phonograph alone.
Others weren’t so ready to let the technology rest there. Ten years later, in 1887, Alexander Graham Bell and others revealed the Graphophone. It was still a tube, but it used engraved wax instead of foil to capture and reproduce sound.
Edison jumped on Bell’s new advancement upon hearing of this and not wanting to be outdone. Instead of a tube coated in wax, Edison’s team designed an all wax tube. This allowed for re-recording by shaving the top layer of engraved wax away in order to record again. He called it the “Perfected Phonograph”. The two competing teams agreed to share the patent, and Edison’s innovation won out. The all-wax cylinder design persisted.
During this time, disc record phonographs appeared on the market but could only be used to playback sound, not record it, as the all-wax cylinder could. So you either preferred discs or cylinders. Not so much different from the vinyl/CD wars a century later.
Since none of us have bought a cylinder to play music, it’s obvious the flat discs won out. They were cheaper to produce and easier to ship, as well as to store. By the 1920s, the battle was over. While cylinders continued to be used for a few decades longer, when it came to commercial sales, it was all about the discs.
There were hurdles to overcome. One thing important about sound capturing and playback is the quality. To be honest, it wasn’t great. Certain frequencies were lost, and if the subject of the recording was a singer, they had to practically thrust their face into the horn used to capture the sound. Western Electric solved this by developing the microphone. This boosted the sound and made for a much better and cleaner recording. Now singers and musicians could focus on what they did best and let the microphones do the rest.
So now flat disc records were available. These were shellac-based and played at 78 revolutions per minute or rpm. But you needed a player, of course, and they weren’t cheap. You could spend anywhere from $100 to $600 for a record player. Not so different from today’s prices, but you have to remember, this was in the 1920s, when an average salary was $20 a week. That’s quite an investment, especially when you have a family to feed.
In 1931, things changed yet again. RCA Victor came out with vinyl records that could be played at half the speed of the shellac-based 78s. These 33 1/3 rpm discs were more durable, lighter, and less prone to breaking than their shellac counterparts. The noise they produced was also cleaner, as vinyl presented a better surface for reproduction. They might have been only capable of ten minutes per side, but that was all to change when Columbia records marketed their long-playing vinyl discs. That’s where the term ‘LP’ comes from. RCA Victor countered by producing smaller 7-inch records that played at 45 rpm, the perfect size for singles. From this point on, 33 1/3 and 45 rpm discs dominated the market. An opportune time for rock-and-roll to explode and for music production to take off. It was a symbiotic relationship that propelled the industry forward and exists to this very day.
Let’s pause for a second to talk about the vinyl record itself. You may see labels or records being advertised as 180 grams or, sometimes, 200 grams. Typical records are around 140 grams. All this means is the thickness of the record itself. Whether a thicker record promotes a better sound or a disc less prone to issues is up for debate. I’ve discussed my thoughts on it here. I’ve seen warped 180 gram records and have hundreds of lesser-gram records that are decades old that sound and look just as good as the day I bought them. It’s all in how you take care of them.
The vinyl itself is polyvinyl chloride. It’s a synthetic plastic that also goes into making PVC pipes. PVC equals polyvinyl chloride. Get it?
We could dive even deeper here, but this isn’t a chemistry class nor a lesson in the industrial processes that go into shaping your vinyl collection. It’s a brief history lesson, right?
So onward.
For decades, vinyl records dominated the music industry. There were brief diversions into other formats such as 8-track tapes and the smaller, more efficient cassette tapes. In the 1980s, vinyl faced its fiercest competitor. The compact disc.
Here was a smaller, lighter medium that could hold way more music than vinyl. Compact discs introduced the world to digital music reproduction. It was cheaper to make and virtually flawless. With the right equipment, you could produce and distribute your own music from your bedroom. It appeared vinyl would soon go the way of Edison’s wax cylinders.
Technology progresses fast, and with it, there are casualties. We’ve already seen the death of the 8-track, and disco, thank God. You may hold dear that old cassette tape collection, but you might be the only one. And now, the compact disc has met its match with digital streaming services. Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, and yes, even the infamous Napster, have been nailing the coffin lid on the compact disc for years.
And then there’s vinyl. I’m excited to say you can’t keep a good medium down. I was going to use the analogy of the phoenix rising from the ashes, but the truth is, vinyl never died. In fact, rumors of its demise have been highly exaggerated.
In 2020, vinyl record sales exceeded CD sales for the first time in 34 years. I’m recording this in 2021, and sales have increased by 108% since then. Now that’s a comeback.
It’s an exciting time if you’re a vinyl enthusiast. Streaming might be convenient, and I love the fact that every song and movie is virtually at my fingertips wherever I may be, but there’s nothing like holding a record sleeve in your hands, admiring the artwork, and reading the liner notes while you listen to side one.
Happy Spinning!
