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The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20160426151404/http://www.musicinthemail.com/audiohistoryLP.html

Music in the Mail-P.O. BOX ONE-BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y. 11718 Classical Music CDs
Also,, Music Articles,Audio History Explored!


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The following narrative was told by Edward Wallerstein (1891-1970)about the development of the LP record in 1948.



IN 1938 I HAD persuaded William S. Paley, president of the ColumbiaBroadcasting System, to purchase the old American Record Corporation,which controlled Columbia Records, for the sum of $700,000. OnJanuary 1, 1939,this purchase became final, and I found myselfpresident of the newly acquired company. As soon as we had movedfrom the small place American Records had at Broadway and Fifty-seventhStreet to 799 Seventh Avenue, there was discussion of a jointrese arch project with CBS for the purpose of making a longer-playingrecord. Nine years later this was to culminate in the LP.

Such records were not new to the record business, of course. RCAhad made them in 1932 and, as a matter of fact, when I becamegeneral manager of the Victor Division of RCA on July 1, 1933,my first act was to take them off the market. The idea was goodand they might have sold, but there were technical problems. Mostof the records were made from Victorlac, a vinyl compound developedby Jim Hunter; the pickups available at that time were so heavythey just cut through the material after several plays. The complaintsfrom customers all over the U.S. were so terrific that we wereforced to withdraw the LPs. If you could get a new pressing ofone of these records today and play it with a modern lightweight2-mil pickup, it probably would sound pretty good.
In 1933 records had fallen into disuse to such an extent thatthe problem was to find some way to get people to listen to themagain. RCA developed at Camden the Duo Jr. player, which couldbe attached to your radio. There were by this time 20 millionradios in the U.S., and it seemed to me that this was our bighope in trying for a comeback of the business that had shrunknationally to probably only $10 million. It worked beautifully,and the little attachment, which was sold at our cost, $9.95,was instrumental in revitalizing the industry. Years later I wasable to use this idea again with the LP.
When we were getting ready to move to Seventh Avenue, we werepondering the type of recording equipment to use. Thinking aheadto the longer record, I insisted that our setup be built so thateverything that was recorded at 78 rpm was also done at 33 rpmon 16-inch blanks. This gave Columbia a tremendous advantage overits competitors, who, when LP finally appeared, were forced tomake copies from their old, noisy shellac records for any materialpredating tape. RCA issued many of these old records with wordsof apology for their poor quality printed on the jackets. Columbiahad masters of good quality going back almost ten years, and thismade a great deal of difference in our early technical superiority.We were able to work on the longer record for only about a yearuntil the outbreak of World War II. Despite the interruption,the staff that was working on the project in 1939 was pretty muchthe same as the one that finally finished it in 1948.

From Columbia Records there were Ike Rodman,Jim Hunter, Vin Liebler,and Bill Savory. I had persuaded Bill Bachman to leave GeneralElectric and come to Columbia just before the work had to be stopped.Bill's contribution was tremendous. CBS was represented by ReneSnepvangers, who concentrated on the problem of developing thelightweight pickup that was a key factor in the success of ourplans. Peter Goldmark was more or less the supervisor, althoughhe didn't actually do any of the work.* I want to emphasize thatthe project was all a team effort. No one man can be said to have"invented" the LP, which in any case was not, strictlyspeaking, an invention, but a development. The team of Liebler,Bachman, Savory, Hunter, and Kodman was responsible for it. Ifone man is to be singled out, it would have to be Bachman, whosework on the heated stylus, automatic variable pitch control, andmost especially the variable reluctance pickup was a startingpoint for a great deal of what was to come. Very quickly theywent to work on what eventually was the final approach: the I-milgroove and more lines per inch. Even a I-mil groove was not unique.When I was at RCA, engineer Fred Barton asked me if he could cutsome I-mil records. That was in 1935 or '36. He did a number ofsessions, mostly with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra,which we used to record in the old Church studio in Camden. Butthe records wouldn't stand up after he made them, because he didn'thave the proper equipment to play them on.


When the war was over and the project began again, the healthof the record business was excellent. Columbia Records' saleshad increased from about $1 million when CBS purchased it to $10million or $12 million by 1945. Columbia's artist list had growngreatly as well. I managed to get the New York Philharmonic-Symphony,the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Orchestra, the ChicagoSymphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra, and on our pops list wereBenny Goodman, Mary Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Eddie Duchin. Thetime was ripe for the introduction of something new into the industry.
Every two months there were meetings of the Columbia Records peopleand Bill Paley at CBS. Hunter, Columbia's production director,and I were always there, and the engineering team would presentanything that might have developed. Toward the end of 1946, theengineers let Adrian Murphy, who was their technical contact manat CBS, know that they had something to demonstrate. It was along-playing record that lasted seven or eight minutes, and Iimmediately said, "Well, that's not a long-playing record."They then got it to ten or twelve minutes, and that didn't makeit either. This went on for at least two years.

Mr. Paley, I think, got a little sore at me, because I kept saying,"That's not a long-playing record," and he asked, "Well,Ted, what in hell is a longplaying record?" I said, "Giveme a week, and I'11 tell you." I timed I don't know how manyworks in the classical repertory and came up with a figure ofseventeen minutes to a side. This would enable about 90% of allclassical music to be put on two sides of a record. The engineerswent back to their laboratories.

When we met in the fall of 1947 the team brought in the seventeen-minuterecord. There was a long discussion as to whether we should moveright in or first do some development work on better equipmentfor playing these records or, most important, do some developmentwork on a popular record to match these 12-inch classical discs.Up to now our thinking had been geared completely to the classicalmarket rather than to the two- or three-minute pop disc market.
I was in favor of waiting a year or so to solve these problemsand to improve the original product. We could have developed a6- or 7-inch record and equipment to handle the various sizesfor pops. But Paley felt that, since we had put $250,000 intothe LP, it should be launched as it was. So we didn't wait andin consequence lost the pops market to the RCA 45s.

It was decided to have the record ready for the fall of 1948.We made a rapid investigation to see whether we could manufactureour own players and very quickly discovered that we had neitherthe skills nor the time to develop them. Consequently we talkedto othef manufacturers about making a player. Although severalwere willing, Philco was chosen to make the first models. I wasa little unhappy about this, because I felt that all of the manufacturersshould be making a player of some sort-the more players that goton the market, the more records could be sold. Philco did a goodjob, and it really took some very fancy tricks to develop theplayer and have it ready to go on the market in such a short spaceof time. Our engineering group showed them how; in fact all ofthe basic technology came from Columbia Records. In the fieldof plastic engineering we had the advantage of having with usJim Hunter, who had developed Victorlac. Actually, for a shorttime RCA had an exclusive on the use of vinyl from Union Carbonand Carbide. Vinyl also had been used in the transcription businessby all manufacturers since about 1932. Its quiet surfaces madeit an ideal material for the purpose, and its short life, becauseof the heavy pickups, was not important because transcriptionswere played only once.

Nothing much had to be changed at our Bridgeport, Connecticut,plant. The same plating facilities and the same record presseswere used.
Scully lathes were used, as they are today. The cutting headswere, of course, ours too. To Hunter must go a great deal of praise,because it is one thing to build a prototype and quite anotherthing to make a product in quantity, and this he managed to dowithin an extremely brief period.
Apparently nobody in the record industry had any faint idea ofwhat we were doing. The only people who knew about it were thosedirectly connected with the project, and they had instructionsto tell no one. When we were pretty well ready to go I showedthe plan to an official of EMI and to Ted Lewis of English Decca.Both were impressed, but EMI was in a spot because in most ofthe world, except the U.S., it was tied up with both RCA and Columbia.So it tried to stall. For that reason i was perfectly willingto help Lewis as much as I could, because we felt that if he broughtthese records on the market in Europe, it would force EMI's hand.This turned out to be necessary, because, while English Deccawas the first major firm to accept LP, EMI was one of the last.Sir Louis Sterlingl the onetime head of EMI, told me in 1950 thatthe company had lost almost $4 million and were almost out ofthe classical record business at the time they finally introducedLPs.

Columbia also had an advantage in that we were the first peoplein the U.S. to use tape for master recording. Murphy was one ofthe first to see a German Magnetophon tape recorder in newly liberatedLuxemburg after the war. He quickly packed it up and shipped itback to CBS. Not long thereafter both EMI and Ampex came out withmachines, and we immediately placed an order for both. By mid-1947,we were using them and had discontinued direct disc cutting. TheAmpex proved to be the better machine, so we sent the EMI machinesback. Of the originally issued LPs about 40% were from tape originals.
In April 1948, two months beforc the LP's first public showing,Paley called David Sarnoff` of RCA and told him that we had anew development in the record field that we would like very muchfor him to see. A meeting was arranged in the board room of CBS,and I demonstrated the LP. Not much was said, but I did have theimpression that General Sarnoff was pretty upset. In the silencethat followed, Paley said he'd be glad to discuss an arrangementfor licensing. Probably, when they left, Sarnoff's men told himthat there was nothing patentable about the dovice. In fact thereare no basic patents on the LP, so RCA was forced to do its ownresearch.They came back to us in a few days and said they weren'tintersted and I think it was a bit of a blow to Paley that hewasn't going to make a lot of money in licensing.

Within a fcw weeks RCA in turn invited us to view what their developmentswere. They laid partcular emphasis on tape on a consumer level.
Well, we had been working with tape longer than they had, andwe saw no prospects for revolutionizing the record industry withtape, This was just a buff as they had nothing to show. As a matterof fact they didn't even demonstrate a tape recorder to us- onlytalked about it. The 45 wasn't even mentioned and prohably wasn'ton their minds at the time. Apparently it wasn't idea they hadcome up with earlicr, discardcd, and then resurrected as somesort of answer to Columbia.
I was glad it wcnt the way it did. Actually , I think that Paleywas badly advised on the possibility of a licensing arrangementtwhich was the only rcason he showed it to RCA. The only protectionthat Columbia had for its new development was the term "LP"itself. which I had originated and which we, had then copyrighted.As a consequence., although many other firms could make long-playingrecords only Columlia could make an LP. However, because of itsconstant usage the term has since passed into the vocabulary alongwith nylon and aspirin.
()n June 20, 1948, the first public demonstration was held atthe Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. By this time. Bachman and the restof the team had managed to lengthen the LP to about twenty-twominutes. As I stopped up to the podium to address the fiftv-oddrepresentatives of the prcss, on one side of me was a stack ofconventional 78-rpm records measuring about eight feet in heightand another stack about fifteen inches high of the same recordingson LP. Aftcr a short speech I played one of the 78 rpm recordsfor its full length of about four minutes,when it broke, as usual,right in the middle of a movement. Then I took the correspondingLP and played it on the little Philco attachment right past thatbreak. The reception was terrific. The critics were struck natonly by the length of the record, but by the quietness of itssurfaces and its greatly increased fidelity. They were convincedthat a new era had come to the record business.

At our annual sales convention a little later in Atlantic City,Paul Southard, our sales manager, had a rather clever idea: Hedesigned his speech so that it ran exactly the length of The NutcrackerSuite, which was on one side of an LP. When Paul began to speakthe stylus was placed on the record, which continued playing verysoftly in the background. When the speech ended and Paul removedthe stylus, the distributors went wild. And the reception in thestores was overwhelming. Columbia had a large stock of good willwith dealers, thanks to the fact that we had been responsiblefor the renaissance of sales in both pops and classics.·

Columbia made its technical know-how available to any who wishedit, and it was not long until other companies began issuing LPs.I believe that the first three to do so were Vox, Cetra-Soria,and Concert Hall, with Columbia doing the pressing. But soon Capitol,Mercury, Decca and indeed all of the other companies, large andsmall, were issuing them. Columbia had to remain in the attachmentbusiness for less than a year. We quickly reduced the price ofthe attachments from $29.95 to $9.9S, which was our cost. As ithad been in 1933 so it was now: What we wanted were record sales.We were not in the equipment business and were delighted to seeother manufacturers almost immediately begin to include LP-playingequipment as a standard part of their lines. Before long the "Tombstone,"as the first jacket design that was used on most of our LPs wascalled, became a regular display at record stores.


The records sold right from the start. During the first two yearsof sales, our profits were down, but we did always make a profit.Up until February of 1949, nothing was heard from RCA. Then itannounced the 45-rpm record, which of course was fine for shortpops numbers but no good at all for classics. With both companiesfirmly committcd. the battle of the speeds was waged. RCA especiallyspent huge sums of advertising money trying unsuccessfully toconvince the public that the 45 was really a good thing for classics.Our policy for advertising was not to compare thc products. Wewere pushing LPs, and there was no comparison. Other things, too,conspired against RCA. I was lucky enough to get the recordingrights to South Pucific with Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin, and therccord was released just about the time of the introduction ofthe 45. It is still the third largest selling album of all time*and was a huge hit in 1949 on LP. Then there were little thingslike a meeting of dealers and distributors at the New Yorker Hotel,with Joe Elliot of RCA and I answering questions. It must havebeen embarrassing for poor Elliot, who had no answers. Actuallythe introduction of 45s didn't touch the sales of LPs at all.Columbia quickly began to issue single pops records on 45s, whichwere and indeed still are, the accepted medium for singles.


I was amazed when I learned that during thc period in which RCAheld out against thc LP-that is, from June 1948 toJanuary 1950-itlost $4.5 million.
It had lost practically all of its classical sales and was beginningto lose its artists. Pinza, whose re-ords had been released byVic·or since the beginning of his career, signed an exclusivecontract with Columbia. And there were others. Rubinstein, Heifetz,and other big-name RCA artists were threatening to leave. Duringthe same time, Columbia had cleared over $3 million. I don't rememberhaving any par·icular intcrest in RCA's announcement onJanuary 4, 1950, that it was making available its "greatartists and unsurpassed classical library on new and improved
Long Play (33 rpm) records." By that time the whole thingwas academic.





Original Columbia "LP" Tombstone cover circa 1948 andOriginal RCA Victor "Long Play" cover circa 1950






Ted Wallerstein, flanked by conductor Fritz Reiner and GoddardLieberson,
then a recording director in the Masterworks Division- examinesome
of the early Columbia LPs. Conductor
George Szell listens intently.



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