Record Changer - History

History

The record changer with a stepped center spindle design was invented by Eric Waterworth of Hobart, Australia, in 1925. He and his father took it to Sydney, and arranged with a company called Home Recreations to have it fitted in their forthcoming phonograph, the Salonola. Although the Salonola was demonstrated at the 1927 Sydney Royal Easter Show, Home Recreations went into liquidation and the Salonola was never marketed. In 1928 the Waterworths traveled to London, where they sold their patent to the new Symphony Gramophone and Radio Co. Ltd. Eric Waterworth built three prototypes of his invention and one of these was sold to Home Recreations as a pattern for their proposed Salonola record player. This prototype is now reported to be in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. The second prototype went to England with Eric and his father and was sold as part of the deal with the Symphony Gramophone and Radio Company. The fate of this machine is unknown. The third prototype was never fully assembled and lay in pieces under the Waterworth home for something like sixty years. After the death of Eric Waterworth, his family found the dissembled parts of the machine and offered them to the Sound Preservation Association of Tasmania. The offer was accepted and an enthusiastic member began the task of reassembling the prototype. It was found that a few small parts were missing but enough remained to complete the assembly to a crude working condition. The prototype record changer is now on display at the Sound Preservation Association of Tasmania resource centre in the Hobart suburb of Bellerive.

The first commercially successful record changer was the "Automatic Orthophonic" model by the Victor Talking Machine Company, which was launched in the USA in 1927. On a conventional gramophone or phonograph, the limited playing time of 78 rpm gramophone records meant that listeners had to get up to change records at regular intervals. The Automatic Orthophonic allowed the listener to load a stack of several records into the machine, which would then be automatically played in sequence, providing a long uninterrupted listening session.

By the late 1950s, in the USA, Garrard and Dual dominated the upscale record changer market. From the late 1950s through the late 1960s, VM Corporation (Voice of Music), of Benton Harbor, Michigan, USA, dominated the lower priced original equipment manufacturer (OEM) record changer market, in the USA. Most VM (Voice of Music) record changers were sold to OEM audio manufacturers, such as Zenith, placed in consoles, portable, and compact low to mid-priced stereo and mono systems. VM record changers, sold to original equipment manufactures, were not labeled with the Voice of Music trade mark on the record changer. Only VM record changers, retailed by VM Corporation, either as a component, or as a part of a VM phonograph, were labeled with the VM (Voice of Music) trademark on the record changer. Outside of the USA, VM record changers technology was licensed to several record changer manufacturers. Telefunken, of then West Germany, was one such company to sign a licensing agreement with VM Corporation. By the late 1960s (1968), BSR displaced VM as the world largest record changer producer, and dominated the OEM record changer market, also, in the USA.

Record changers were provided in most mid-priced consumer record players of the 1950s through 1970s. Record changers became rarer in the 1980s, mainly due to the introduction of the compact disc.