- Messages
- 10,849
- Location
- vancouver, canada
My parents had a huge 78 rpm record collection as a friend of the family serviced a fleet of jukeboxes and my parents got first dibs on the discs that were taken out of rotation. They were still in very playable condition. Alas when my Mom passed a few years ago the collection was of little resale value and we sold the lot for a $100LPs came out first -- they were introduced by Columbia in 1948, with RCA rolling out the 45 the following year, along with a line of specialized 45rpm record changers to play them on.
The 33 1/3 rpm speed wasn't the innovative aspect of the LP -- it had been around since the late 1920s for radio transcriptions, and RCA Victor had sold a series of 33 1/3 rpm records to the public starting in 1931. These flopped largely due to the Depression, but 33 1/3 recordings continued to be made for radio use thruout the 1930s and 1940s. The real difference with the Columbia LP system was its use of a narrow groove -- the "microgroove" idea had been experimented with by the Edison company in 1928-29, and Columbia helped itself to the idea in 1948.
RCA refused to acknowledge the LP during 1948 and 1948, and marketed "albums" of 45s containing longer-form musical pieces divided into parts just like had been done with 78s. These proved fantastically unpopular, and RCA finally gave in and licensed the Columbia system for its own LPs.
Jukebox operators watched all this with interest -- they had a huge investment in 78rpm equipment and records, and it was well into the 1950s before 45rpm jukeboxes became the standard.