Until the 1970s, if you wanted to listen to an artist’s song on the radio instead of waiting for it, you had to have a record player and his record. Records, known for many years as the most useful method of listening to music, were replaced by cassettes, CDs, MP3s and finally digital music platforms. Strangely enough, records came back into fashion after 2008.
The appearance of plaques occurred in the late 19th century. It developed rapidly and became the biggest actor of voice sharing in a short time. Although it is a very primitive method today, where we can reach the song we want with a single touch, many music lovers are still immersed in the magic of records. Let’s take a closer look at its history and how it works through the question of what is Gelinplak.
What is plaque?
In its most basic definition, a record is a sound storage unit. The record not only stores the sounds, it also plays the stored sounds with a suitable record player. Although they have been produced from many different materials throughout history, they are generally produced from PVC material. It can record sound of varying length depending on its size and type, and it can store different recordings on both sides. He explained the history of the record player known as the turntable in our article here.
How does plaque work?
We will include the details while explaining the history of the record, but in its most basic definition, it would not be wrong to say that the working system of the records is like a fingerprint. The sound is processed analogously to the channels on the record and stored in this way. When the channels on a record placed on a turntable are read by the turntable’s needle, the recorded sound begins to play. If a different sound is processed on the back of the record, when you turn it and place it on the record player, these channels are also read and played by the needle.
It all started with Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph:
In the 1870s, Thomas Edison was doing important work on the telephone and telegraph. Edison invented a device called the phonograph in 1877 to record and play sounds, as both devices performed an unregistered transmission. For the phonograph, which reads sounds recorded on a wax cylinder, Edison used the definition of music reproduction.
In the 1880s, Volta Laboratory, owned by Alexander Graham Bell, improved Edison’s designs and developed a device they called the gramophone. This device read the sounds not through a wax cylinder, but through a hard rubber cylinder. The gramophone was manually operated. In 1887, an inventor named Emile Berliner developed flat discs with lateral cuts similar to the plates we know today.
The plaques enter the mass production process:
By 1892, wax cylinders, which were sold to play on phonographs and gramophones that were now in homes, could only record two minutes of sound. The cost of these wax cylinders, which did not offer a very efficient use, was quite high.
In 1901, double wax cylinders began to be produced, both in series. The sound channels on the double wax cylinders were not carved one by one, but were printed on a single mold. These were referred to as gold molded wipes because during manufacture the electrodes emitted gold vapor. We can say that these devices were the first mass-produced records, since around 150 were produced in a single operation.
Records of 33, 45 and 78 hit the stage:
Also known as 33, 45 and 78 records emerged in this process. Flat discs developed by Emile Berliner were called 78s because they played at 78 rpm. These discs, which were much better quality than wax cylinders, could record sound for up to 5 minutes on each side. Their structures were much heavier and more fragile than modern records.
In 1930, a company called RCA Victor introduced a much longer-lasting record to the market. These 12-inch records were called 33 because they played at 33⅓rpm per minute. Thanks to their large size, they could record sound for much longer.
When Columbia, the rival company of RCA Victor, released their 33’s in 1948, RCA Victor employees embarked on a new quest. As a result of this search, small records came on the market that were only 7 inches in size and were called 45s because they played at 45 rpm. Broadcast playback systems discovered during this period are used even in the digital world today.
The disappearance of the records in the dusty pages of history and their sudden resurrection:
With the advent of much smaller sized records and record players, this method of listening to music had peaked. But every peak had a fall, and the reason for this decline was the tapes. Eight-channel cassette cartridges, which first appeared in the 1970s, were much more useful than records and could store sound recordings for much longer periods of time. The next is already CD, MP3 and digital music platforms.
Record Store Day held in the United States in 2008 brought dusty records back to the surface. It’s unknown why, but that day, for the first time since 1986, vinyl sales surpassed CD sales. The record market experienced 50 percent annual growth until 2020. Even today, when music lovers want to buy a physical music recording unit, they prefer records rather than cassettes or CDs.
Is the record sound really better than digital?
Of course, whether something is better is debatable because it is purely subjective. However, the main difference between digital and vinyl recording is that it is analog. The sound on the record is a physical recording, on the digital, this sound is a digital recording. This makes the sound on the record feel more real. In other words, it is not known whether the sound on the record is better, but it is definitely more sincere.
We talked about the history and the curious about the question of what is a record, which was the most useful way of listening to music for a while, then went out of fashion but became popular again today. Is record sound better than digital music? You can share your thoughts in the comments.
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