Unusual Types of Gramophone Records - Unusual Sizes

Unusual Sizes

• European shellac records — In the first three decades of the twentieth century European companies including Pathé, Odeon, and Fonotipia made recordings in a variety of sizes, including 21 cm, 25 cm, 27 cm, 29 cm, 35 cm, and 50 cm (roughly 81⁄₂, 10, 113⁄₄, 12, 14, and 20 inches).
• Early American shellac records were all 7-inch until 1901, when 10-inch records were introduced. 12-inch records joined them in 1903, along with 14-inch records that played at the unusual speed of 60 RPM. The 14-inch size was soon abandoned. Victor introduced 8-inch records to replace their inexpensive 7-inch product, but were also soon discontinued. Nine-inch brown shellac records were issued under the Zon-O-Phone label. By 1910 the odd sizes had been retired and nearly all discs were either 10-inch or 12-inch, although both sizes were normally a bit smaller than their official diameter.
• 16-inch discs playing at 331⁄₃ RPM provided the sound in the Vitaphone "talking picture" system developed in the mid-1920s, the first use of the 331⁄₃ RPM speed. In radio broadcasting, 16-inch 331⁄₃ RPM discs—shellac in the early 1930s, but vinyl in later years—were used to distribute "electrical transcriptions" of prerecorded programming. Radio stations also made their own 16-inch lacquer ("acetate") disc recordings in-house to delay the broadcast of live network feeds or to prerecord some of their own local programming. These "standard groove" discs used roughly the same large groove dimensions and spacing found on 78 RPM records and typically played for about 15 minutes per side, with very good fidelity—when heard over the air, indistinguishable from live to a casual, but not to a critical listener. Some early classical LPs were dubbed from recordings which had been mastered on 16-inch lacquer discs in anticipation of eventual release in a smaller "microgroove" format. Old 16-inch turntables are sometimes still found in radio broadcast studios, but it is now very unlikely that any disc larger than 12-inch will ever be played on them.
  
• 8-inch EPs. Mostly seen as Japanese pressed records in the 1980s and 1990s, and after 1992 in the US (one record plant started producing them after then).
• 7-inch and smaller children's records were sold before World War II but nearly all were made of brittle shellac, not an ideal material for use by children. In the late 1940s, small plastic records, including some small picture discs, replaced them. Ten-inch children's records were made as well, but 7-inch and smaller sizes were more compatible with small hands. 6-inch Little Golden Records made of bright yellow plastic were a common sight in children's playrooms in the United States during the 1950s. The 78 RPM speed was used for some children's records even into the 1960s, as nearly all players still included it and an old 78-only record player could be repurposed as a toy for the kids, with minimal grief if it got damaged by rough handling.
• 6-inch, 7-inch, 8-inch, and 9-inch flexi discs were popular in Japan where they were known as sound-sheets and were often in traditional round format. In other areas, flexi disks were usually square and often included in a magazine (see Unusual materials below). For example, the American magazine National Geographic's January 1979 issue included a flexi disk of whale sounds called "Songs of the Humpback Whale." With a production order of 10.5 million, it became the largest single press run of any record at the time.
• 5-inch, 6-inch, 9-inch, 11-inch, and 13-inch records. In 1980, the British band Squeeze released a 5-inch 331⁄₃ RPM vinyl recording of "If I Didn't Love You", backed with "Another Nail In My Heart" (A&M Records AM-1616 / SP-4802). Due to space restrictions of the grooves, both songs were mixed as monaural. In the late 1980s, Spirit released a 6-inch single, a re-recording of their late 1960s hit, "Fresh Garbage," on Mercury Records. Underground hardcore punk bands in the 1990s started releasing EPs on all sizes of vinyl from 5 to 13 inches in size. UK goth band Alien Sex Fiend were the first band to release an 11-inch record in October 1984. Popular industrial music group Nine Inch Nails released a limited edition series of 9-inch discs to aid in promoting the single "March of the Pigs" from their full length 1994 album The Downward Spiral. The record featured two songs on the first side, and an etching of the album's promotional logo (a coiled centipede) on the second side.
• 120 mm records. Techno artist Jeff Mills released the single for The Occurrence on a disc that is a gramophone record on one side, and a compact disc on the other. Although dubbed a 5-inch record, to be usable in most compact disc players, the record can be no bigger than 120 mm or about 4.7".
• a 1" record was released by the hardcore band Spazz on Slap A Ham Records. It contains one track on each side : "Hemorrhoidal Dance of Death" (played at 78 RPM) and "Patches Are for Posers" (played at 33 RPM). The edition was limited to 14 copies. Similarly, Japanese grindcore band Slight Slappers released a 2-inch on the same label, limited to 666 copies.
• Oddly shaped discs were also produced (see Shaped discs below).