Comments on: the music goes ’round and ’round

By: KHarn

KHarn — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:47:30 +0000

Thanks for clearing up that mystery, folks!

By: jayessell

jayessell — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:07:24 +0000

This reminds me of the scene in the first ‘Men in Black’ movie where Kay is displaying
alien technology to Jay and holds up a dime sized disk.
“This is gonna replace CD’s soon; guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again… “

By: beagledad

beagledad — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:47:38 +0000

I remember the 16 rpm setting on a cheap kids’ record player way back when. Thanks for clarifying what is was really for. I only used it to drive my mom nuts playing The Yellow Rose of Texas at super-slow speeds.

By: Don

Don — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:36:48 +0000

The “16″ speed setting is actually 16-2/3 rpm — half of the 33-1/3 rpm setting. I know this because my brother used to get books on records and that was the speed they were. He was really glad to make to switch to books on tape, as the records were quite bulky . . . .

By: jayessell

jayessell — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:05:12 +0000

I suspect the 16rpm setting was for primitive audiobooks for the vision impaired.
PS:
Thanks for the book link rsterling78

By: Scott B.

Scott B. — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:27:05 +0000

KHarn – We had a stereo in the 1960s that had a 16 rpm setting — the only time I ever saw that. It was fun to put records on it and play them slowed way down.

By: KHarn

KHarn — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:02:08 +0000

My dad’s uncle became rich in the early sixties and bought an early color TV that had a drawer for a radio and phonograph. He removed the drawer and gave it to dad and one odd thing about it was that it had a setting for SIXTEEN RPMs!
I think it was an RCA.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:40:59 +0000

rsterling78,

Yes, I’ve read that book. It’s very insightful; more people should read it. I highly recommend it.

By: rsterling78

rsterling78 — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:38:15 +0000

Jerry,

There’s a great book about how the more things change, the more they stay the same with technology: http://www.amazon.com/Future-H.....amp;sr=8-1

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:13:32 +0000

This reminded me of a memory: When I was a kid, I found in my grandmother’s house a book like a photo album, but each page was a sleeve with a 78 rpm record. And suddenly I understood what a “record album” really meant.

By: Rick Auricchio

Rick Auricchio — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:28:24 +0000

A new format is a way to sell the same material again.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:43:05 +0000

One of the most interesting things about this site is seeing how the same problems with new technology (as in this case, battles between incompatible media formats) appear again and again in history. And yet people with little historical sense always say that the amount of new technology today and the difficulty of integrating it all is “unprecedented” — another thought that has appeared and reappeared for the last 140 years.

By: John Savard

John Savard — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:32:29 +0000

“Phonograph records?” The gall of that dishonest salesman, who clearly doesn’t have a single Phonograph record in his store! The 78 6/23 rpm records are Gramophone records, and the 45 rpm and 33 1/3 rpm records are essentially similar, even with the diversity of sizes and speeds noted in the article.

The only genuine Phonograph records are the Edison cylinder records! Surely everyone knows that?