The inventor of this monstrosity was a mechanic by the name of Eldridge Johnson who overnight suddenly moved up into the millionaire bracket due to his invention of a sewing machine that did not work as it was meant to be. Columbia made all its discs to rotate at 80 and HMV had its pioneering recordings made to operate at speeds between 68 and 92 rpm. You then had to have them tuned on your piano using what was then known as the gramophone's governor, that’s if you owned a piano of course, these speeds gradually developed into one uniformed standard speed of 78 rpm. It was that man our unsung hero Emile Berliner, who determined that disc recording speeds, should rotate at standard uniformity of rpm of 78. Emile Berliner rebuffed Thomas Edison 's idea of stylus made from precious jewels by means of points which could be made from steel like sewing needles. But Thomas Edison idea was better than that of Emile Berliner's of steel needles. The informed equivalence of recordings did not begin until the year of 1912, when a British Gramophone Company conducted listening tests on their back catalogue and through these tests it was determined that the 78 rpm to be the right speed at the time, most recording companies had adopted 78 rpm although the process of testing was not completed until the early 1930s. We are of course, aware, that the electrical mains frequencies differentiate on opposite sides of the Atlantic, stroboscopic speed testers and synchronized motors meant a nominal speed of 77.922 rpm. In countries that used 50 hertz and 78.261 in countries that used 60 hertz which as time went on became an international standard fixation at 78 rpm, but the amount of grooves would have to be limited for a standard 12inch record. |
