haynes@cats.ucsc.edu, aynes@cats.ucsc.edu (05/27/91)
Re: 16-2/3 RPM recordings - I suspect they are still in use as "talking books for the blind" though they may have been supplanted by cassettes by now. Your public librarian could probably tell you. At one time a blind person could get the loan of a player, from the Library of Congress as I recall, and the materials for the blind were mailable free or at very low rates. There was also a project by I think it was Chrysler to produce an automobile record player at that speed. This was maybe mid-50s, long before cassettes and eight-track cartridges. And for some reason that reminded me of yet another recording format. I vaguely recall a short-lived product from mid 60's that involved a disk record and player that were supposed to be small enough to fit in your hip pocket. Or maybe it was just the records, and they were flexible so if you sat on one that was OK. Which is getting pretty far from telecom. [Moderator's Note: I've done volunteer work for ten years for the Chicago Public Library producing programs for visually-handicapped people. The 16 2/3 rpm records were gone *long* before I started. PAT]
"Donald E. Kimberlin" <0004133373@mcimail.com> (05/28/91)
Responding to the Moderator, <haynes@felix.ucsc.edu> writes: > I'm looking at ... (Radio Physics Course ... that tells about > talking movies ... The Vitaphone system developed by Bell Labs > used approx 15-inch diameter records turning at 33-1/3 rpm. Must > have been a gutsy way to make movies, since the sound was recorded > at the same time as the filming and you couldn't edit the record. > Obviously the reason for the large slow record is to make it last as > long as a reel of film. It sure was, and a gutsy way to show them, too. While the original Vitaphone-by-disk method was long gone by the time I came along to work in movie theatres as a teenager, the Vitaphone disk turntable was still there, mounted on the rear of the projector lamp bases. I was told the projectionist had to be a slip-cueing DJ, playing the record for the current reel in as close to lip sync as possible. Even though sound-on-film came along and killed disks in the projection booth, the Vitaphone name lived through several techniques. If you look carefully at the title screens of Warner Brothers Looney Tunes, you'll see the Vitaphone name listed there. Haynes continues: > While this format didn't last long in the movies it did carry over to > radio broadcasting. Up until the 1950's broadcast radio stations had > libraries of "transcriptions" on 15-inch 33-1/3 rpm disks. These > contained all kinds of stuff: music, sound effects, historical > speeches, etc. At WTSP in St. Petersburg, FL we did all those things, right up into the late 1950's. We had two major "transcription libraries," The World Transcription Service and the Standard Transcription Library. Both were 33-1/3 rpm recordings on "16-inch" disks, as the size was called. Western Electric's piece of this was evidenced on the Standard transcriptions, which were "vertical cut," that is, the needle action was vertical in the groove as opposed to lateral in consumer records. There were claims that "vertical cut" was higher-fidelity than lateral cut. To play them back, we had "transcription heads" on the turntables that could be switched to use either vertical-sensitive or lateral-sensitive pickup windings. (Yes, windings ... these were BIG, clunky, long playback arms that while very well-balanced, weighed a pound or so it seemed. To play a warped record, we'd set a line of lead type from the <St. Petersburg Times> composing room on top of the playback head! Other stations had to use a 50 cent or dollar coin.) The standard transcriptions bore WECo's mark in the form of a patent license notice for use of the vertical technique. Haynes continues: > Also programs could be distributed in this way; > programs not considered important enough to rate real-time wire > network transmission. Some stations had recording equipment so they > could record important events broadcasts on disks. Absolutely. Among the things WTSP's library contained was all two thousand or so episodes of the "Lone Ranger." Every weekday evening at 7, I played the one scheduled on the log for that day. And, tape recording was not yet all that trusted yet, so we "delayed" many programs by cutting our own acetate disks off the network line, holding them hours or days, and playing our locally-made "e.t." when scheduled. Perhaps the wildest form of this was delaying Sunday baseball games until local blue laws permitted broadcasting a sporting event. There, we'd be recording the game in 15-minute segments, then playing the disks back in sequence an hour or two into the game. Few people know that WECo was heavily into broadcasting equipment. Bell Labs, of course, did the basic design, but had been into building a wide variety of radio equipment since very early days. The entry of Bell interests into radio broadcasting with WEAF at New York brought to radio, among other things, the "commercial announcement," as AT&T fully expected radio broadcasting to be a "message service" for sale, every bit as much as a letter, telegram, or telephone "message." In a set of relations so complex as to defy sorting out, AT&T and RCA both cooperated and competed in various forms of early radio. These included Bell's use of RCA transmitters at Rocky Point for the low-frequency New York-London SSB radio, numerous Bell Labs experiments at Deal Beach, NJ, and experimental station 3XN at Whippany, NJ. 3XN was reported in a 1928 book to use a Western Electric 7-A transmitter with a capacity of 200 kilowatts, operated at 50 kilowatts, equipped with Western Electric-made water-coooled power tubes. Another paragraph of the 1928 book said that WCAP in Washington, DC had been recently closed due to "complicated legal difficulties," but that it had been operated by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company for three years. This was likely part of the action around that time in which AT&T withdrew from operating radio broadcasting outlets. WCAP's transmitter was said to have been designed by a 'Mr. Colpitts of the Western Electric Company." (Radio people certainly recognize the name Colpitts!) WBAP at Fort Worth was said to have a Western Electric transmitter, made with "two 250-watt oscillators and two modulators of the same power" (500 Watts of modulated oscillator? Egads!). In fact, well into the 1950s, WECo was a major player in the supply of radio broadcasting equipment for both the studio and the transmitter. At WTSP, our three antenna towers had been supplied by the Blaw-Knox Company, ordered through the Graybar Supply office in Tampa, FL, in order to support our WECo-made FM antenna that was fed from our WECo 405B FM transmitter, whioh was full of WECo tubes, from the smallest to the largest, a 10 kilowatt VHF amplifier. There were numerous WECo AM transmitters and WECo 25-Type studio audio consoles still in use by the late 1950s. While RCA, Collins, GE, Westinghouse, Federal and Gates all made broadcasting transmitters, it can fairly be said that Western Electric was the standard of excellence in that era of broadcasting -- top price, but admittedly most durable. It was an earlier consent decree agreed by AT&T that took WECo out of the broadcasting supply business. Up into the very late 1950's, WTSP was still buying odds and ends like WECo tubes and patch cords from the Graybar office at Tampa (and we could buy WECo telephones, too -- ostensibly for the purpose of "broadcasting order wire use). But WEco was at sea, also. An illustration from the 1928 book shows a "Western Electric 50-Watt combination Radiotelegraph and Telephone transmitter, Type T-1-A, enclosed in protecting cabinet on board a 75-foot patrol boat of the U.S. Coast Guard." It is matched with a Western Electric Type CGR-1-A superheterodyne receiver. The frequency range is described as 1700 to 2500 kilocycles. Also, a "new type of calling apparatus," by the name "CGR-9 Transmitter attachment" and "CGR-10 reciever attachment," made by Western Electric. Any worker with early mobile radios of the 1950s will recognize these mechanical keyers and selectors as the same technology used 25 years later by local Telcos for mobile phones. And WECo's early days seem to have included manufacture overseas, too. A 1928 description of the British radio behemoth, GFEX, operating on 16 kilohertz (egads!) with an output of 540 kilowatts that produced 600 amps of RF current in a 1-ohm antenna that was 2-3/4 miles long, was reported to use power tubes that were "all Western Electric water-cooled, made at New Southgate, England. The power unit consists of 18 valves, having each an output of 10 kilowatts ... " Thus, to produce the 540 kilowatts output, three of these `power units' were paralleled to add the 180 kilowatts output of three together. This beast produced an RF current of 700 amps in its antenna. Back to recordings: John Levine <johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> writes: > Western Electric had a long-standing interest in sound recordings. > During the 1930's they had a project to make ultra-hi-fi recordings > far beyond the then-standard 78 RPM records. They recorded things > like Beethoven symphonies played by famous orchestras. I've heard > transcriptions of a few and the sound is even by modern standards > excellent. With its reason for interest in high-quality sound for radio broadcasting and motion pictures, the art of recording sound on film had produced the most noise-free recording medium of the era preceding magnetic recording. I have recall, but no documentary sources, of WECo's engaging in mastering sound recordings on film; these may have been part of the (at that time) superb sound quality of the Standard Transcription Library. One reason so far as consumer sound recording was concerned is described by Roland Gelatt in his "The Fabulous Phonograph: 1877-1977" (Macmillan, New York, 1977, 2nd ed.): He says that by 1933, "... the record business in America was practically extinct," referring to almost 70 years of virtually no development beyond Edison's basic acoustic methods. Apparently, the record industry had not of its own accord adopted any of the advances that electronics could bring. Even so, my 1928 reference book shows a phono pickup and states that, "Modern electric phonographs, usually combination phonograph and radio broadcast receiver ..." But, another limit had been set for WECo in a 1926 settlement between RCA and AT&T that took AT&T out of radio broadcasting operations: WECo was barred from competing with RCA in the manufacture of consumer radio broadcast receivers; thus, a WECo-made consumer radio could not contain a phonograph. So, while it might seem that the Great Depression was sounding a death knell for the record business, "The Movies" were coming on strong. Yet another director for WECo to stick with its industrial products. For all its various activities, Western Electric of the period after 1930 or so seems to have been interested only in commercial products and sales of its systems to industry. Meantime, Haynes concludes with: > Oh, and my grandmother had a Western Electric sewing machine. It seems that around WW I days, Western Electric was into many sorts of products. I located one reference to early days of things electrical that described an Edison product called an "electric pen." It was a 4,000 rpm electric motor with a short crank connected to a stylus used to punch many tiny holes in copying stencils. The reference says, "The pen was widely advertised and when the Western Electric Co. took it up large numbers were sold. At one time, more than 60,000 were in use..." I also have vague recall of Western Electric having been involved in a wide variety of products over its early years, but have no good single history of the company. Since it was of Cicero, IL origin and was so important there for so long, perhaps there is some Chicago-area history describing the full breadth of Western Electric's ventures over time.
bill@uunet.uu.net> (05/29/91)
In article <telecom11.403.1@eecs.nwu.edu> 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: > He says that by 1933, "... the record business in America was > practically extinct," referring to almost 70 years of virtually no > development beyond Edison's basic acoustic methods. Apparently, the > record industry had not of its own accord adopted any of the advances > that electronics could bring. Even so, my 1928 reference book shows a > phono pickup and states that, "Modern electric phonographs, usually > combination phonograph and radio broadcast receiver ..." Some of the companies made the changeover to electric, but the budget companies stuck with accoustic, as there were no royalties to pay, and therefore they could get to market cheaper. > So, while it might seem that the Great Depression was sounding a > death knell for the record business, "The Movies" were coming on > strong. The other thing that was killing records, in conjunction with the great depression, was that new-fangled toy, radio. In the 1927-1929 era there were three records that were million sellers. My Blue Heaven - Gene Austin, Prisoners Song - Vernon Dahlhard, and I forgot the third one. Then in the depression era a good selling record was 50,000 copies. Next million seller didn't come along until 1942, Elton Britt - THere's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere. The first patriotic hit of that era. A good reference book for record industry is "From Tin Foil To Stereo - The Evolution of the Phonograph" by Read and Welch. The first edition was printed in 1959. I have the second edition printed in 1976. Highly recommended if you can find one anywhere. It was published by Sams. Bill Vermillion - UUCP: ...!tarpit!bilver!bill : bill@bilver.UUCP
"William M. Hawkins" <bill@rose3.rosemount.com> (06/01/91)
I just returned from a visit to the Pavek Wireless Museum in a suburb of Minneapolis. It's a three year old museum with a major collection of wireless stuff. It also contains a Vitaphone Lathe, dated 1926, with a model number of WE D85249 (yes, it looks like a serial number, but that was on another plate). A single motor drives the turntable from one end and the lathe screw from the other. The placard says that Selsyns were used to couple the camera and the recording lathe. Selsyns are back to back three phase synchronous motors. Well, the transmitter is a generator and the receiver is a motor. So, that's how they synchronized sound and picture. Still, I didn't think a director could make a film a reel at a time, without cutting and splicing. Something had to be used for sound editing, to go with the film editing. The placard also said the lathe cut a 17.5 inch disk, which was used to press 16 inch copies. The disk on the turntable looked like metal, and the head looked like it could dig a serious groove in the metal. The 'card also said 33 RPM. Maybe they dropped the third of an RPM. Bill Hawkins, alias bill@bert.rosemount.com 612-895-6840 at work.
Scott Dorsey <kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov> (06/03/91)
In article <telecom11.416.8@eecs.nwu.edu> bill@rose3.rosemount.com (William M. Hawkins) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 416, Message 8 of 8 > I just returned from a visit to the Pavek Wireless Museum in a suburb > of Minneapolis. It's a three year old museum with a major collection > of wireless stuff. It also contains a Vitaphone Lathe, dated 1926, > with a model number of WE D85249 (yes, it looks like a serial number, > but that was on another plate). A single motor drives the turntable > from one end and the lathe screw from the other. The placard says > that Selsyns were used to couple the camera and the recording lathe. > Selsyns are back to back three phase synchronous motors. Well, the > transmitter is a generator and the receiver is a motor. So, that's > how they synchronized sound and picture. Still, I didn't think a > director could make a film a reel at a time, without cutting and > splicing. Something had to be used for sound editing, to go with the > film editing. Yup. The projector actually had mechanical coupling, but the recording was done with a selsyn arrangement. Some of the earlier Vitaphone lathes just had a 60 Hz synchronous motor which would synchronize with the indentical motor on the camera, by virtue of their being on the same power line. Because the loads were different, though, the motor slip was different and they didn't stay synched too well. Sound editing was done with a bank of synchronized turntables, a mixer, and a synchronized cutting lathe. Scenes would be shot with three cameras all synched together, and the film edited seperately, but maintaining the same length and pattern so that the edited film would stay in synch with the sound. Often scenes really would last for a full reel, and the scenes were shot all in one take with no editing within. > The placard also said the lathe cut a 17.5 inch disk, which was used > to press 16 inch copies. The disk on the turntable looked like metal, > and the head looked like it could dig a serious groove in the metal. > The 'card also said 33 RPM. Maybe they dropped the third of an RPM. The disk was a sheet of aluminum with a nitrate or acetate coating on it. There are also some glass transcription discs out there with similar coatings, though I don't believe they were used for Vitaphone. Makes me glad I live in the 1990's, with my nifty Nagra. Or is this the 1960's? Something like that. scott
person@uunet.uu.net> (06/07/91)
In article <telecom11.403.2@eecs.nwu.edu> haynes@cats.ucsc.edu, aynes@cats.ucsc.edu writes: > Re: 16-2/3 RPM recordings - I suspect they are still in use as > "talking books for the blind" though they may have been supplanted by > cassettes by now. Your public librarian could probably tell you. At > [Moderator's Note: I've done volunteer work for ten years for the > Chicago Public Library producing programs for visually-handicapped > people. The 16 2/3 rpm records were gone *long* before I started. PAT] Actually, they still do produce some of the magazines for talking books in this format. I also beleive that the rpm is closer to 8. I haven't actually used my talking book turntable for a few years, so my mind may be slipping. I still get those flexible records every week though. And yes, they have gone over to cassettes for most things. Brett G. Person North Dakota State University uunet!plains!person | person@plains.bitnet | person@plains.nodak.edu