Picture Disc - The Beginnings

The Beginnings

A few seven-inch black shellac records issued by the Canadian Berliner Gramophone Company around 1900 had the "His Master's Voice" dog-and-gramophone trademark lightly etched into the surface of the playing area as an anti-piracy measure, technically qualifying them as picture discs by some definitions.

Apart from those debatable claimants for the title of "first", the earliest picture records were not discs, strictly speaking, but rectangular picture postcards with small, round, transparent celluloid records glued onto the illustrated side. Such cards were in use by about 1909. Later, the recordings were pressed into a transparent coating that covered the entire picture side of the card. This novelty product idea proved to have a very long life. In the 1950s and throughout the rest of the vinyl era, picture postcard records, usually oversized and often featuring a garish color photograph of a tourist attraction or typical local scenery, were issued in several countries. These and similar small novelty picture records on laminated paper or thin cardboard, such as were occasionally bound into magazines or featured on the backs of boxes of breakfast cereal, are usually not classed with the larger and sturdier discs that were sold in record stores or used as promotional gifts by record companies, but a few featured famous performers and are now eagerly sought by collectors of those artists' records.

The first picture discs of substantial size, sold as records meant only to be looked at and played, not put into a mailbox, appeared in the 1920s. Their first wave of significant popularity did not arrive until the start of the 1930s, when several companies in several countries began issuing them. Some were illustrated with photographs or artwork simply designed to be appropriate to the musical contents, but some graphics also promoted films in which the recorded songs had been introduced, and a few were blatant advertising that had little or no connection with the recording. Some politicians and demagogues explored the potential of the discs as a medium for propaganda. Adolf Hitler and British fascist Oswald Mosley were each featured on their own special picture discs.

Most of these records were made of a simple sheet of fairly thin printed cardboard with a very thin plastic coating and their audio quality was substandard. Some were more sturdy and well-made and they equaled or actually surpassed the audio quality of ordinary records, which were still made of a gritty shellac compound that introduced a lot of background noise. In 1933, RCA Victor in the U.S. issued a few typical cardboard-based picture records but was unhappy with their quality and soon began making an improved type. A rigid blank shellac core disc was sandwiched between two illustrated sheets and each side was then topped with a substantial layer of high-quality clear plastic into which the recording was pressed. Like nearly all records being made for the general public, they were recorded at 78 rpm, but one issue was recorded at 33⅓ rpm, a speed already in use for special purposes which Victor was then unsuccessfully attempting to introduce into home use. It was the first 33⅓ rpm picture disc and the only one made until many years later. These were deluxe picture discs, priced much higher than ordinary records, and they sold in very small numbers. In the early 1930s the entire record industry was being devastated by a worldwide economic depression and the proliferation of the new medium of radio, which made a wide variety of music available free of charge. Picture discs of all kinds were among the casualties.