Record Collecting - History

History

Record collecting has been around probably nearly as long as recorded sound. In its earliest years, phonographs and the recordings that were played on them (first wax phonograph cylinders, and later flat shellac discs) were mostly toys for the rich, out of the reach of the middle or lower classes. By the 1920s, improvements in the manufacturing processes, both in players and recordings, allowed prices for the machines to drop. While entertainment options in a middle to upper class home in the 1890s would likely consist of a piano, smaller instruments, and a library of sheet music, by the 1910s and later these options expanded to include a radio and a library of recorded sound.

After the fall of the phonograph cylinder, the record was the uncontested sound medium for decades. The number of available recordings mushroomed and the number of companies pressing records skyrocketed. These were 78–rpm, originally one-sided, then later double-sided, ten-inch shellac discs, with about two to four minutes of recording time on each side.

Growth in the recorded sound industries was stunted by the Great Depression and World War II, when some countries were hamstrung by a dearth of raw materials. By the time World War II ended, the economy of these countries began to grow again. Classical music (which was a large portion of 78–rpm releases) was slowly edged into a minority status by the influx of popular and new music, which was less costly and thus more profitable to record.