Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a host and a
Speaker 1: producer and I love all things tech and this here
Speaker 1: show is the one where I talk about what is
Speaker 1: technology and how it affects us. Now. In our last episode,
Speaker 1: we followed the development of the predecessors to the modern
Speaker 1: turntable leading up to the conclusion of World War One,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna have to do a little bit of
Speaker 1: backtracking in this episode, because oddly enough, history does not
Speaker 1: unfold as a single series of events one after the other.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that's all happening concurrently, and
Speaker 1: that makes it difficult to talk about various developments. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna chat a little bit about what was happening
Speaker 1: at the end of that era. At that time, due
Speaker 1: to the war, manufacturing facilities were ready to go into
Speaker 1: full production mode for non war time use, and you
Speaker 1: suddenly had all these factories and pieces of equipment and
Speaker 1: processes and stuff like that in place to make stuff.
Speaker 1: Originally it was going to be military stuff, but now
Speaker 1: it could be turned to making consumer stuff for the
Speaker 1: average citizen, and people finally finding themselves with more spare
Speaker 1: time at their disposal thanks to industrialization. It was the
Speaker 1: perfect time for entertainment technology to make its way into
Speaker 1: the home. Now. If it hadn't been for radio, the
Speaker 1: predecessors to the modern turntable would likely have found their
Speaker 1: foothold in the common household at that time. But radio
Speaker 1: gave people the chance to experience all sorts of different programming.
Speaker 1: They weren't limited to whatever songs they could find pressed
Speaker 1: on record discs or carved into wax cylinders, and the
Speaker 1: recording media at that time was still limited in how
Speaker 1: much information it could actually carry. Typically, a recording could
Speaker 1: be no longer than a couple of minutes on either
Speaker 1: cylinders or discs. Even in nineteen o one, when Eldridge
Speaker 1: Johnson produced the ten inch record disc, you could only
Speaker 1: fit about three minutes of audio on the records. The
Speaker 1: playback speed for recorded media was not standardized at this
Speaker 1: time and could range between sixty and a hundred thirty
Speaker 1: revolutions per minute. Now, that depended both on the medium
Speaker 1: and the equipment you played the media on. Right, so
Speaker 1: a wax cylinder might say that it needs to be
Speaker 1: played back at seventy revolutions per minute, so you'd have
Speaker 1: to have a player that could play at that speed.
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of issues at that time
Speaker 1: of these non standard formats, and it created a lot
Speaker 1: of incompatibilities across systems. The physical records just could not
Speaker 1: hold more than a couple of minutes of audio, largely
Speaker 1: because the grooves in the records. We could talk about cylinders,
Speaker 1: but I'm specifically talking about record discs. The groups were
Speaker 1: pretty large by today's standards, so you couldn't fit as
Speaker 1: many lines of grooves. Remember, a group is essentially a
Speaker 1: spiral carved into the surface of a disk, and it
Speaker 1: spirals from the outer edge to the inner edge, and
Speaker 1: you couldn't make those grooves too tight. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: we didn't have the precision there. So the gramophone and
Speaker 1: phonograph and other such devices started to fall out of
Speaker 1: favor as far as home use is concerned. While the
Speaker 1: recording and playback speeds weren't standardized yet. The technology that
Speaker 1: would make that possible did emerge in eight so this
Speaker 1: is before well before World War One. That tech was
Speaker 1: called a governor, and the governor is a general term
Speaker 1: for various types of mechanical devices. Typically it is something
Speaker 1: that regulates speed within a system. So you have governors
Speaker 1: and all sorts of things, including vehicles. There are governors
Speaker 1: that are in place and vehicles that top out how
Speaker 1: fast a car can go, for example, and if you
Speaker 1: were to remove that governor, you could, in theory, push
Speaker 1: your vehicle to move faster than what it was rated for,
Speaker 1: although you do so at your own peril because you
Speaker 1: could cause some pretty bad damage, and not to mention,
Speaker 1: have a vehicle that doesn't control very well at those
Speaker 1: high speeds. Now, the governor in would eventually allow for
Speaker 1: standardized playback speeds, but it took a few decades to
Speaker 1: become adopted universally. So people started to put them into
Speaker 1: their various machines like the phonograph and the gramophone to
Speaker 1: make sure that the revolutions per minute we were regular,
Speaker 1: that that they kept at that specific speed, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you would have issues where the revolutions might speed up
Speaker 1: or they might slow down, and that would affect the
Speaker 1: playback recording, the playback quality. You would have the playback
Speaker 1: speed up or slow down, so suddenly everyone starts sounding
Speaker 1: like their chipmunks or that they're on barbiturous or whatever,
Speaker 1: so you wanted to have a way of regulating that
Speaker 1: and keeping it nice and steady. Another limitation in the
Speaker 1: technology g was in sound quality and amplification. From their
Speaker 1: introduction to the nineteen twenties, these various gadgets relied on
Speaker 1: either stethoscope like earpieces which you would plug into your ears,
Speaker 1: kind of like earbuds, or they would have an acoustic
Speaker 1: horn that would convey sound from a diaphragm to a room. Now,
Speaker 1: in some implementations of the invention, the vibrations passed directly
Speaker 1: from a needle to a membrane, So you would have
Speaker 1: a membrane and there'd be a needle mounted to the
Speaker 1: middle of the membrane, and as the needle moved across
Speaker 1: the recording service and vibrated due to the actual recording
Speaker 1: in the groove, it would transmit those vibrations to the membrane,
Speaker 1: which would then create the sound that you would hear,
Speaker 1: but it would be a very low volume because there
Speaker 1: was no amplification there apart from acoustic amplification due to
Speaker 1: there being a horn. In other implementations, however, there was
Speaker 1: another component in which compressed air would cause the membrane
Speaker 1: to vibrate, allowing you to have a separate horn speaker
Speaker 1: connected by cable to the device. So you could have
Speaker 1: this implemented directly into the case for a phonograph or
Speaker 1: a gramaphone, or it could be a separate thing. But
Speaker 1: it might make you wonder how these things actually work.
Speaker 1: How did this compressed air speaker function. Well, first, imagine
Speaker 1: that you have a cabinet. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a big integrated system. Here on the top of the
Speaker 1: cabinet is the platter. That's the surface upon which you
Speaker 1: would place a record, uh, and it's the surface that
Speaker 1: rotates around. There's the arm that has the stylus or
Speaker 1: needle at the end of it. There it is connected
Speaker 1: to a horn apparatus. The horn access your loud speaker. Now,
Speaker 1: depending upon the model of device you might have, you
Speaker 1: might wind up a spring motor by turning a crank
Speaker 1: and that would allow there the spring motor to coil
Speaker 1: and then provide the energy necessary to rotate the platter.
Speaker 1: Or you might have it connected to an elect motor,
Speaker 1: in which case the electric motor provides the rotational force.
Speaker 1: But either way you get something that's going to turn
Speaker 1: the platter around. That's only the tip of the iceberg. Though.
Speaker 1: Inside the cabinet, if you were to open up, you
Speaker 1: would find a blower, which in turn would typically be
Speaker 1: connected to an air canister. Uh, that would be your
Speaker 1: compressor part. And in earlier versions of the technology, you'd
Speaker 1: have a hand crank and a spring motor for the
Speaker 1: blower itself, whereas later versions used an electric motor to
Speaker 1: operate the blower. Turning on the motor would cause it
Speaker 1: to blow air into the canister, thus compressing the air.
Speaker 1: Now this gives me a chance to talk about how
Speaker 1: blowers work. In these early incarnations, the blowers would typically
Speaker 1: use a centrifugal fan. Now, imagine a fan sort of
Speaker 1: like a water wheel. In fact, a water wheel isn't
Speaker 1: a bad analogy. The fan is made up of two
Speaker 1: parallel discs joined together by blades set between the two discs. Now,
Speaker 1: that's the fan wheel. The fan wheel is set inside
Speaker 1: a housing which has an intake and an output section.
Speaker 1: Air comes into the fan through the central hub the intake,
Speaker 1: and as the fan rotates, it changes the directional force
Speaker 1: of the air into a rotational forces. Trivigal force pushes
Speaker 1: it out. I know that that's being really free with
Speaker 1: the term force there, but just bear with me, and
Speaker 1: the air gets pushed out towards the edge and then
Speaker 1: it makes its way through the output. So imagine air
Speaker 1: coming straight into the center of this wheel inside of housing,
Speaker 1: then being forced out towards the edges of the housing interior.
Speaker 1: But you've only got one way out of the housing,
Speaker 1: which is the output valve, and that's all the incoming
Speaker 1: air is forced out of there. The canister acts as
Speaker 1: the holding space for compressed air, and valves allow air
Speaker 1: to pass from the intake, but not to go back out,
Speaker 1: so air keeps coming into the canister cannot escape back
Speaker 1: the way it came in. As you crambore air into
Speaker 1: the canister, of the pressure inside the canister increases. That
Speaker 1: creates potential energy to do work, and we use compressors
Speaker 1: for all sorts of stuff. Compressed air at very high
Speaker 1: pressure can provide the energy needed to operate a jackhammer,
Speaker 1: for example, but your typical record player didn't need quite
Speaker 1: that much power, even for heavy metal music, which had
Speaker 1: not been invented yet. A connector from the canister would
Speaker 1: lead to a part of the horn on the top
Speaker 1: of the whole apparatus. Typically, the needle on the record
Speaker 1: would control a valve and that would allow compressed air
Speaker 1: to pass through, impacting a membrane and creating the vibrations.
Speaker 1: So the compressed air was able to create the same
Speaker 1: sort of vibrations that the needle would if it were
Speaker 1: directly connected to the membrane, but it would do so
Speaker 1: with much more force, and that would result with higher
Speaker 1: amplitude sounds. Thus you would have louder sounds of increase
Speaker 1: the volume considerably. Uh it was really loud. Actually, the
Speaker 1: motor and blower would be really loud. The sound was
Speaker 1: really loud. So you ended up with a very noisy
Speaker 1: device overall, and there was no way to control the
Speaker 1: volume apart from turning off the compressor. And if you
Speaker 1: did that, the only power you would get for sound
Speaker 1: would be from the needle creating vibrations and the membrane alone,
Speaker 1: just by making the air molecules vibrate a little, making
Speaker 1: the membrane vibrate a little, So any sound that came
Speaker 1: out of the horn would be really really quiet. If
Speaker 1: you turned on the compressor, that sound would be increased dramatically.
Speaker 1: But so you would also get the noise of the
Speaker 1: the blower and the compressor UH as well as whatever
Speaker 1: the the music was or the audio was, so it
Speaker 1: was either too quiet for you to really hear, or
Speaker 1: so loud that you would never want it in your house.
Speaker 1: It was more meant for large public spaces than for
Speaker 1: UH inside a home. It had just been a really
Speaker 1: loud nuisance inside any house. An example of this type
Speaker 1: of setup. By the way, if you ever want to
Speaker 1: look it up, there are videos on YouTube where you
Speaker 1: can actually listen to one of these devices and see
Speaker 1: a full explanation of how it works. Look up the
Speaker 1: Victor oxta phone a U x E T O P
Speaker 1: H O N E that was produced in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, and there are videos on YouTube of restorers
Speaker 1: who have these and have shown how they work, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty fascinating stuff. Now, the lack of volume control
Speaker 1: was another limitation that made those early record blayers less
Speaker 1: than ideal for your average consumer, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: earlier radio had the same problem. Earlier radio was also
Speaker 1: using speakers similar to what these early phonographs and gramophones
Speaker 1: were using. It wasn't until the invention of the electric
Speaker 1: driven amplification that things really got going now. I'll go
Speaker 1: more into detail about that in the upcoming tech stuff
Speaker 1: episode on speakers and headphones, but here's a quick overview.
Speaker 1: Experiments and electromagnetic loudspeakers began in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but the first practical ones arrived on the scene about
Speaker 1: two decades later in nineteen fifteen, and then um those
Speaker 1: were made by Peter Jensen and Edwin Priddham, who get
Speaker 1: the credit for making those. It took another decade for
Speaker 1: refinements and improvements to the tech to make it not
Speaker 1: just practical on its own, but also preferable to the
Speaker 1: air compressor amplifiers that were already in use. In general.
Speaker 1: Electric got a patent for such an implementation, designed by
Speaker 1: researchers Chester Rice and Edward Kellogg, and i'll talk more
Speaker 1: about all of these people in the speakers episode. The
Speaker 1: benefits of this technology were huge. Eventually they get playback
Speaker 1: audio at different volume levels without compromising on sound quality.
Speaker 1: Audio distortion wasn't nearly as big an issue with these
Speaker 1: speakers as was the case with earlier ones. In fact,
Speaker 1: the basic design that ge patented is still pretty much
Speaker 1: how speakers work to this day, more or less I
Speaker 1: say more or less because they become more sophisticated over time,
Speaker 1: but they still work on the same principles, and you
Speaker 1: don't need an acoustic horn louds loudspeaker anymore, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. This is as good a time as any
Speaker 1: to address something else that purists get particular about. Now.
Speaker 1: I've used turntable and record player a bit interchangeably here,
Speaker 1: and that's largely because a lot of people do the
Speaker 1: same thing. It's a common practice where people will use
Speaker 1: one or the other to refer to the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But I need to acknowledge there is a
Speaker 1: technical distinction. A record player contains a turntable as one
Speaker 1: of its components, but also has a built in amplifier
Speaker 1: and speakers. A turntable by itself does not have those elements,
Speaker 1: and instead it's a component that you would hook up
Speaker 1: to a larger sound system in order to listen to
Speaker 1: the output. But let's face it, y'all, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: end up using these terms interchangeably, so just prepare yourselves
Speaker 1: for slight misinformation in that respect, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people do it, and and and old habits die hard.
Speaker 1: At the same time, it became possible to make electrical
Speaker 1: recordings of music using microphones. Microphones has been around for
Speaker 1: a while. People started to understand the microphone effect towards
Speaker 1: the end of the ninet century, but again it hadn't
Speaker 1: really been perfected until about the nineteen twenties. And I
Speaker 1: know I've said before, I'll just repeat it here. A
Speaker 1: microphone is essentially a speaker in reverse. The two technologies
Speaker 1: are closely related. Before the microphone, all recordings were made
Speaker 1: directly into acoustic horns to create the vibrations used to
Speaker 1: cut a master record. So you would have a big
Speaker 1: horn uh connected down to a membrane that had a
Speaker 1: needle attached to it, and you would uh move a
Speaker 1: blank record that was easily etched um around in a circle.
Speaker 1: The needle would continue through the groove in the record.
Speaker 1: You would shout or play music or whatever into the
Speaker 1: acoustic horn. That would make the membrane vibrate, and that
Speaker 1: vibration would be transmitted to the needle, which would carve
Speaker 1: into the record as it went through the groove the
Speaker 1: little bitty notches that would represent sound. So it's the
Speaker 1: exact opposite approach as what was happening when the needle
Speaker 1: was reading sound off of a record. Some of the
Speaker 1: biggest stars in those early years of sound recordings were
Speaker 1: opera singers. Henrico Caruso was particularly popular as the tenor
Speaker 1: could sing in very clear tones at a very high volume,
Speaker 1: and that was great for those early recording sessions. Other
Speaker 1: famous stars were Billy Murray, not the comedic actor, but
Speaker 1: the guy Who's Sang Over There, which was written by
Speaker 1: George M. Cohen in support of America's war effort in
Speaker 1: World War One. The first jazz record was the Livery
Speaker 1: Stable Blues by the original Dixie Land Jazz Band in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. The first hit country record was Little Old
Speaker 1: Log Cabin in the Lane by Fiddland John Carson, which
Speaker 1: debuted in nineteen twenty three. Using the microphones would then
Speaker 1: really transform things. Those early recordings were mostly done through
Speaker 1: the acoustic corn section, but the microphones changed things up dramatically.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in just a second. With the
Speaker 1: invention of the electric loud speakers and microphones, uh, we
Speaker 1: really started seeing the recording industry transform. And this is
Speaker 1: sort of tangentially related to turntables, but you have to
Speaker 1: understand that the development of the recording industry is largely
Speaker 1: what made the turntable business possible. So it's really hard
Speaker 1: to cover one without also talking at least a little
Speaker 1: bit about the other. So I'm gonna try and keep
Speaker 1: the recording industry history stuff to a minimum, but I
Speaker 1: need to incorporate it a little bit in this discussion
Speaker 1: to understand why the record player and turntable industries developed
Speaker 1: as they did. So just a little bit more before
Speaker 1: I go back to talking about record players. In the
Speaker 1: famous crooner Bing Crosby recorded his first record, which is
Speaker 1: called I've Got the Girl, and he used a carbon
Speaker 1: microphone for the recording. I'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: the Speakers and Headphones episode as well. Bell Labs developed
Speaker 1: this microphone, and Crosby would go on to become a
Speaker 1: superstar in recording with expanding not only music but also film.
Speaker 1: His popularity helped drive a lot of interest in the
Speaker 1: recording industry. And while all this was happening, there was
Speaker 1: another revolution, so to speak, in the record player world,
Speaker 1: and this has had to do with the transition from
Speaker 1: spring motors to electric motors. One of the earliest such
Speaker 1: record players was the Brunswick Panetrope, which debuted in nineteen
Speaker 1: had an electrically driven turntable as well as vacuum tube
Speaker 1: amplifiers and electric speakers, and even had an apparatus that
Speaker 1: could drop a new disk down once an old one finished,
Speaker 1: and this would become a common feature and a lot
Speaker 1: of record players moving forward, this sort of automatic record changer,
Speaker 1: which would just hold records at a certain height. When
Speaker 1: the arm had reached the end of its of its
Speaker 1: uh motion moving inwards from the outer edge of a record,
Speaker 1: then that would automatically make the arm move back to
Speaker 1: its original starting position, up a new album on top
Speaker 1: of the first one, and then you could start again.
Speaker 1: So the pane trope actually allowed you to have up
Speaker 1: to five discs stored in this way, which was helpful
Speaker 1: because again, these discs could only hold a few minutes
Speaker 1: of music each, so if you wanted to listen to,
Speaker 1: say a symphony, you have to have a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of these to get from one section to the next,
Speaker 1: and this way you could line them all up and
Speaker 1: listen to them in sequence. Again, I'll cover vacuum tubes
Speaker 1: and why why they are important and amplification in an
Speaker 1: upcoming episode. Just know that those were a very important
Speaker 1: invention to help make things like consumer radios and record
Speaker 1: players possible. Now we've set the stage for the rise
Speaker 1: of the DJ which happened in between the two World Wars,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, I'll talk about the original
Speaker 1: disc jockeys and how the record player was able to
Speaker 1: cover from the blow dealt by commercial radio stations. But
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Jonathan And before we jump into the
Speaker 1: rest of this show, I just want to give a
Speaker 1: quick shout out to a new podcast that's come out
Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works, the Soundtrack Show, hosted by David Collins,
Speaker 1: and I just thought it was thematically linked to the
Speaker 1: whole turntable idea. This is a show that's specifically about
Speaker 1: movie scores and soundtracks and how they affect the way
Speaker 1: we perceive the films, the life they have beyond films,
Speaker 1: the inspiration and influences that went into the creation of
Speaker 1: those soundtracks. This is my jam, guys. I love soundtracks,
Speaker 1: So if you are really passionate about music in general
Speaker 1: and movie music in particular, check it out. It's the
Speaker 1: Soundtracks Show. You can find it on iTunes or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts and now back to the show. Okay.
Speaker 1: So N was a huge year for the recording industry
Speaker 1: in general and ultimately for record player is in particular.
Speaker 1: The development of electric amplification, coupled with the move to
Speaker 1: electric motors, helped bring sound quality up dramatically and reduce
Speaker 1: the amount of noise record players created. Meanwhile, companies like Edison,
Speaker 1: Columbia and Victor were working on extending the playing time
Speaker 1: of disks, making improvements to the technology to push three
Speaker 1: or four minutes of audio to seven or eight minutes.
Speaker 1: Western Electric was able to squeeze ten minutes of audio
Speaker 1: on a disc when the company began to develop tech
Speaker 1: for real films, as in real to real films that
Speaker 1: would have sound accompanying them, so the record player industry
Speaker 1: also actually ties in with the film industry. These improvements
Speaker 1: did increase the amount of audio you could record to
Speaker 1: a disc, but in general the sound quality was not
Speaker 1: as good as what was on the shorter earlier discs,
Speaker 1: and so the short form approach was preferable in most applications.
Speaker 1: In N Charles Brush offered the first piezo electric featherweight
Speaker 1: style lists. The stylist is what a lot of people
Speaker 1: would refer to as the needle, but it's more appropriately
Speaker 1: called the stylus. This is the part of the record
Speaker 1: player that settles into the groove on the record. The
Speaker 1: information recorded in that groove causes the needle to vibrate.
Speaker 1: In a piece of electric stylus, the needle is made
Speaker 1: of a crystal or ceramic that generates an electric charge
Speaker 1: when it experiences applied mechanical stress. That's the piece of
Speaker 1: electric effect. So stuff like quartz experiences this. If you
Speaker 1: apply a mechanical stress to quartz, it will then generate
Speaker 1: an electric charge. If you apply an electric charged quarts,
Speaker 1: it will actually exert a mechanical stress. It will actually vibrate,
Speaker 1: and so that's why quartz crystals are used in watches,
Speaker 1: for example. So as the stylus moves through the groove,
Speaker 1: it encounters the variations inside the groove that represent the
Speaker 1: audio recording. The stylist's movements caused the crystal to generate
Speaker 1: this electric charge, which then can drive the electric speaker.
Speaker 1: Usually an amplifier in there too. But you get the idea.
Speaker 1: No longer did the needle have to transmit vibrations directly
Speaker 1: to a membrane, right, You didn't have to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: Now the energy can move from kinetic form into electric,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have just physical motions, you had electric ones. Later,
Speaker 1: cartridges which consists of the stylists and some other components,
Speaker 1: could have other types of pickups. So this was a
Speaker 1: piece of electric pickup. But there are other kinds. There's magnetic,
Speaker 1: dynamic and capacityance, and I'll have to cover those in
Speaker 1: a different episode at some point, because honestly, I ran
Speaker 1: out of time to cover all the different types of pickups.
Speaker 1: But piece of electric is important because it meant that
Speaker 1: you could switch to a different method of playing back music.
Speaker 1: This also meant that you can develop lighter types of
Speaker 1: stylus so that you weren't causing as much wear and
Speaker 1: tear on the discs every time you listen to them,
Speaker 1: and you increase the utility of those discs. All of
Speaker 1: these steps are things that made record players more attractive
Speaker 1: in the eyes of consumers. Further down the road, another
Speaker 1: big part of the problem with records was the physical
Speaker 1: stuff the records were made from. At this stage the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the go to material was shellack. Shellac
Speaker 1: is a material that comes from bugs in India and Thailand.
Speaker 1: They're called lack bugs. Actually come from the female lack bug.
Speaker 1: The resin secreted by these bugs has been used in
Speaker 1: lots of stuff that we do process at first. So
Speaker 1: these bugs secrete this stuff, the female ones as they
Speaker 1: move along branches on trees in India, and it creates
Speaker 1: sort of a almost like a tunnel that allows the
Speaker 1: bug to adhere to the surface it's on as it
Speaker 1: moves around. So to harvest it, workers will scrape the
Speaker 1: resin off of the bark of the trees where the
Speaker 1: lack bugs live. Then they'll heat it up and the
Speaker 1: resin will melt, and usually you have it in like
Speaker 1: a mesh bag, like a very tightly woven mesh bag,
Speaker 1: and as you heat it up, the liquid drains out
Speaker 1: like cheese cloth, and everything else stays inside. And then
Speaker 1: uh you use that, you process it and it becomes
Speaker 1: kind of a natural plastic. It's very similar to synthetic polymers,
Speaker 1: but it is a it's actually natural. You don't have
Speaker 1: to synthesize it. But the material was ill suited for
Speaker 1: long playing records. The slower revolutions per minute, if for
Speaker 1: a long playing record, would create rumbly noises on the shellac,
Speaker 1: and the medium was not really well suited for narrow grooves,
Speaker 1: which would have effectively added more information to the disk
Speaker 1: by cramming work grooves onto the same sized plate of shellac.
Speaker 1: So record player manufacturers needed to find a different medium
Speaker 1: to record upon. They also needed to find a different
Speaker 1: way to transmit vibrations to a speaker, because those heavy
Speaker 1: needles of the early record players would create a great
Speaker 1: deal of whear and tear on the discs. So that's
Speaker 1: where that piezo electric needle would come in play. Uh So,
Speaker 1: let's get back to that in justice. Second, record players
Speaker 1: were still expensive at this time, so the industry was
Speaker 1: beginning to depend heavily on niche markets like jukeboxes and
Speaker 1: entertainment halls, and so you weren't seeing as many record
Speaker 1: players being sold to the average consumer. They were just
Speaker 1: out of the price range, and people still didn't think
Speaker 1: they were good enough to actually own when you could
Speaker 1: go out and buy a radio instead and tune into
Speaker 1: different radio stations and listen to music that way. It's
Speaker 1: kind of similar again to the streaming world of today.
Speaker 1: Why go out and buy a song if you can
Speaker 1: listen to stuff streaming especially if you can listen to
Speaker 1: it on demand, which obviously you could not do just
Speaker 1: over the radio unless they have a call in line
Speaker 1: and you've just got that phone number memorized. That's beside
Speaker 1: the point. Now. One of the pioneers of radio that
Speaker 1: would end up helping the recording industry down the line
Speaker 1: was Ray Knuby who got the nod from Charles doc
Speaker 1: Herold to play a stream of music on Harold Radio Station. Now,
Speaker 1: Harold's radio station was part of a school for radio operators.
Speaker 1: They were actually there to learn how to how to
Speaker 1: work these radios while on ships for example. This was
Speaker 1: back before there were any regulations of what could and
Speaker 1: could not be broadcast on radio. Because the technology was
Speaker 1: so new, there were no laws to guide it, something
Speaker 1: else that we see today over and over, especially in
Speaker 1: realms like the Internet. By playing this music, it was
Speaker 1: creating a new demand for record players, uh this time
Speaker 1: in radio stations, not in the homes, but the radio
Speaker 1: stations themselves needed the record players in order to play
Speaker 1: the music because they didn't always have live musicians in
Speaker 1: the studio to create whatever music they needed, so they
Speaker 1: need to have prerecorded stuff. Over in the UK, Christopher
Speaker 1: Stone lobbied the British broad Broadcasting Company, or BBC, to
Speaker 1: allow him to broadcast a program in which he played
Speaker 1: recorded music. He even created a dual turntable set up
Speaker 1: so he could prepare one record while the second turntable
Speaker 1: was playing already another disc. So you start playing one song,
Speaker 1: you've got another turntable you can set up your next song,
Speaker 1: and then you just switch when it's time to go
Speaker 1: from one to the other. You don't have any dead
Speaker 1: air that way. His program began to air all the
Speaker 1: way back in nine Other radio broadcasters began to follow suit.
Speaker 1: Many of them became known as pancake turners because they
Speaker 1: were dealing with flat discs all day long and turning
Speaker 1: them over whenever they wanted to play a song on
Speaker 1: the other side. The first person to get the title
Speaker 1: DJ or disc jockey was apparently Martin Block, who was
Speaker 1: a radio show host. He had a show in America
Speaker 1: titled Make Believe Ballroom, and Block was covering a huge
Speaker 1: news story in nineteen thirty five that would be the
Speaker 1: disappearance of the Lendburg Baby, and between updates he would
Speaker 1: play records rather than drone on or repeat information that
Speaker 1: he had just broadcast. He would end up being called
Speaker 1: a disc jockey by none other than Walter Winchell. All
Speaker 1: a man overseas, it's good old Transatlantic accent, Walter Winchell,
Speaker 1: and he described blocks work as being a disc jockey,
Speaker 1: and it became a general term to describe radio broadcasters
Speaker 1: who used musical records in the presentations. Alright, so back
Speaker 1: to the research work on playback media. One of the
Speaker 1: alternatives to shellack was a mixture of vinyl chloride and
Speaker 1: vinyl acetate, which was called vinyl light, although most people
Speaker 1: just call it vinyl for short. The discovery of vinyl
Speaker 1: itself was pretty interesting, as it wasn't from the deliberate
Speaker 1: experimentation of engineers trying to find a new material for
Speaker 1: the recording industry. Instead, it was kind of discovered as
Speaker 1: an accident. Back in nine there was a guy named
Speaker 1: Waldo Seaman who was working for the B. F. Good
Speaker 1: Rich Company to find a way to bond rubber and
Speaker 1: metal together. And Waldo was looking into creating a new
Speaker 1: type of adhesive for that purpose, and he decided to
Speaker 1: experiment with vinyl chloride, which had first technically been discovered
Speaker 1: in the eighteen seventies by a German chemist named Eugen Balman.
Speaker 1: The problem was this type of plastic was extremely rigid
Speaker 1: and difficult to work with, and no one had quite
Speaker 1: figured out how to fix that. Like, you could make it,
Speaker 1: but it would just be in whatever shape you made
Speaker 1: it in and you couldn't really work it in any way.
Speaker 1: So Waldo got some powdered vinyl chloride and he dumped
Speaker 1: it into a boiling solvent, and he ended up inventing
Speaker 1: plastic sized vinyl chloride, which today we call PVC. The
Speaker 1: result was a gel like substance that could be shaped
Speaker 1: however you liked before it would set into its rigid form,
Speaker 1: so you could actually work with the stuff while it
Speaker 1: was still hot, and then when it cooled it would
Speaker 1: be in the shape that you needed it to be in.
Speaker 1: Researchers found a lot of uses for vinyl. The Union
Speaker 1: Carbide Corporation was the first to create the co polymer
Speaker 1: of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate to create vinyl light,
Speaker 1: which the company then trademarked. The vinyl light was harder
Speaker 1: than shellac and could hold a finer groove as well,
Speaker 1: which meant you could have a higher number of grooves.
Speaker 1: Spirals around the disk to hold more information. So shell
Speaker 1: I album can hold between eighty two one hundred grooves
Speaker 1: per inch, and you had several inches from the outer
Speaker 1: edge to the inner edge of the record. Vinyl light, though,
Speaker 1: could hold more than double that amount. But cramming more
Speaker 1: grooves onto a disc was just one way to help
Speaker 1: extend the playing time of a record. The other was
Speaker 1: to reduce the number of revolutions per minute. So it's
Speaker 1: easier to understand this if we use an analogy. Imagine
Speaker 1: that you have a long, straight road and it stretches
Speaker 1: out directly in front of you for about two hundred
Speaker 1: forty miles, and if you drive down that road at
Speaker 1: seventy eight miles an hour, he'll take you about three
Speaker 1: hours to get to the end. But if you took
Speaker 1: a more leisurely pace, let's say you're driving at thirty
Speaker 1: three and a third miles per hour, it would take
Speaker 1: you seven hours to make that same journey. You're going
Speaker 1: the same distance, you're just going at a slower speed. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening with records and RPMs. The road in
Speaker 1: this case is the groove spiral that's cut into the
Speaker 1: record disc. The car is the stylus and it travels
Speaker 1: the length of the road from the outer edge to
Speaker 1: the inner edge in that spiral. So the faster the
Speaker 1: record spends, the last time it takes the stylus to
Speaker 1: make that journey. So by slowing down the revolutions, you
Speaker 1: extend the playing time. But of course this all depends
Speaker 1: on what speed you recorded the album at in the
Speaker 1: first place, because if you record the album at seventy
Speaker 1: RPMs and you play it back at thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third, it's gonna sound weird, super duper slowed down
Speaker 1: at that point because you're playing at a much slower
Speaker 1: speed than what it was intended. Slowing down the revolutions
Speaker 1: wasn't really the big challenge. It wasn't like they couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out how to make a motor turn more slowly.
Speaker 1: That was actually the easy part. The hard part was
Speaker 1: finding a way to record the information to a master
Speaker 1: disc at a slower speed without introducing a lot of
Speaker 1: noise in the process, and that took some time to
Speaker 1: solve because the slower they took the revolutions when they
Speaker 1: were when they were actually recording, the more a little
Speaker 1: noise could find its way into the recording system, especially
Speaker 1: if you didn't have a very clean duplication process. The
Speaker 1: first company to demonstrate what we would call a long
Speaker 1: playing disc or LP was Columbia Records. Dr. Peter Goldmark,
Speaker 1: who was an electrical engineer originally from Hungary, led the effort.
Speaker 1: He and his team developed a micro groove record that
Speaker 1: could be played at a low speed, which necessitated an
Speaker 1: overhaul in the duplication processes I just mentioned. With those
Speaker 1: smaller grooves, you had to be way more careful about
Speaker 1: contaminants during that duplication process or you would have terrible
Speaker 1: effects on the sound quality. And he pioneered a clean
Speaker 1: room approach to record duplication, which is not too different
Speaker 1: from what you would find in a microprocessor manufacturing facility today.
Speaker 1: That's why they do in order to eliminate errors due
Speaker 1: to contamination from dust and other particles. He also introduced
Speaker 1: a set a fire needle or sapphire stylists, and a
Speaker 1: lightweight tone arm for a record player. This lightweight arm
Speaker 1: placed far less pressure on a disc than the standard
Speaker 1: needles had in the past, so you reduced wear and
Speaker 1: tear on the records. And on June twenty one, nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, Columbia Records invited press to come to a
Speaker 1: demonstration of a new record disc technology. They introduced a
Speaker 1: twelve inch record with micro grooves on both sides. The
Speaker 1: playing time for each side was about twenty three minutes,
Speaker 1: and it was played at a thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third revolutions per minute speed. It was an incredible jump
Speaker 1: from the earlier formats. Remember, even Western Electric had only
Speaker 1: managed to get to ten minutes per side, so more
Speaker 1: than doubling that and playing at a slower speed. To
Speaker 1: show how impactful this development was, Columbia Records took two
Speaker 1: sets of a collection of three five musical selections, and
Speaker 1: one set was made up of conventional shellac records, which
Speaker 1: each could hold maybe three minutes of music, and the
Speaker 1: other set was made up of old light records, which
Speaker 1: could hold up to twenty three minutes per side. The
Speaker 1: shellac records ended up being a stack that was eight
Speaker 1: feet tall, the vinyl records ended up being fifteen inches tall.
Speaker 1: Because they could pack so much more music onto this
Speaker 1: new format, So the message was clear. This new approach
Speaker 1: greatly improved the utility of record players. You could have
Speaker 1: an entire collection that would have taken up a huge
Speaker 1: shelf in a room. Now it takes up a fraction
Speaker 1: of a bookshelf because of the the amount of information
Speaker 1: you could store on a vinyl record compared to a
Speaker 1: shellac record. Columbia had approached competitor r C. A. Victor
Speaker 1: before they held this demonstration in an effort to create
Speaker 1: a new standard for records. They wanted to try and
Speaker 1: get this set so that the average consumer wouldn't be
Speaker 1: faced with a terrible choice of proprietary formats. But executives
Speaker 1: that r C. A. Victor were not keen on this
Speaker 1: idea because they had already been working on their own
Speaker 1: solution to the problem of creating long playing albums. They
Speaker 1: called them extended play albums, and they had settled on
Speaker 1: a different speed entirely of forty five revolutions per minute,
Speaker 1: which it introduced to the market in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: so a year after when Columbia debuted their new record
Speaker 1: player format, and so began the Great Groove Wars, or
Speaker 1: the War of the Speeds. Columbia back thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third revolutions per minute. Victor backed forty five revolutions
Speaker 1: per minute, and you still had seventy eight RPM albums
Speaker 1: out there too, not to mention a few sixteen rpm albums,
Speaker 1: not many, but a few, and the forums created some
Speaker 1: real chaos in the marketplace. Everyone was unsure which one
Speaker 1: to back. But it didn't last terribly long. So late
Speaker 1: forties you've got these brutal format wars. But by nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, Columbia was selling forty five and Victor was
Speaker 1: selling LPs, so everyone was using both standards at that point,
Speaker 1: and several record players began to support both formats. They
Speaker 1: would include a switch that would let users choose which
Speaker 1: rpm playback speed they wanted to use, so you just
Speaker 1: had to make sure you matched the right rpm speed
Speaker 1: switch setting to the album that you're listening to. The
Speaker 1: also led to people playing records on the wrong speed
Speaker 1: on purpose, like that's what I used to do on
Speaker 1: occasion with our record player back home, because there's nothing
Speaker 1: like listening to Black Sabbath as performed by the Chipmunks.
Speaker 1: The LP completely changed the recording industry. In the early
Speaker 1: days of record discs, you were dealing with a single
Speaker 1: sided disc capable of holding two or maybe three minutes
Speaker 1: of audio. Even when double sided discs became a thing,
Speaker 1: that's still only necessitated two short recordings of two to
Speaker 1: three minutes each. So if you've ever wondered why so
Speaker 1: many songs stick to about three minutes in length, this
Speaker 1: is why the media we used was limited in the
Speaker 1: earliest days, and it's sort of set the standard now. Granted,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of songs that go much longer
Speaker 1: than that these days, but the reason why we kind
Speaker 1: of have that three minute standard time link for a
Speaker 1: lot of songs is pretty much due to the limitations
Speaker 1: of the record industry back in the nine Dean vorties.
Speaker 1: But the LP could pack a lot more material on it,
Speaker 1: so now you had artists exploring the possibilities that this created.
Speaker 1: You could use the extra space to make a collection
Speaker 1: of songs, so you could do like the Greatest Hits album.
Speaker 1: So instead of like recording all new material, you could say, well,
Speaker 1: I had all these hit records, let's put them all
Speaker 1: on a single LP, and then people can buy that
Speaker 1: and they get the whole collection on one album. You
Speaker 1: can charge more for it, or you could create an
Speaker 1: all new experience with songs that are written and arranged
Speaker 1: for the purpose of delivering a specific experience. This would
Speaker 1: take a while. It wasn't something that everyone jumped on
Speaker 1: right away, but the LP actually changed music as a result.
Speaker 1: While you could listen to songs individually, more and more
Speaker 1: artists began to experiment with creating an album experience and
Speaker 1: which one song kind of led into another, either literally
Speaker 1: or figuratively, so they are monumentally important albums. You know,
Speaker 1: groups like the Beach Boys or the Beatles were creating
Speaker 1: album experiences that would then be carried on in in
Speaker 1: future decades by groups like Pink Floyd and even today
Speaker 1: or you know, Michael Jackson's Thriller album you could argue
Speaker 1: is the sort of experience where you were meant to
Speaker 1: listen to a full album, not just necessarily a song
Speaker 1: off the album. Create a new way to consume music
Speaker 1: and a new demand for music as a result, so
Speaker 1: the record player market began to make a comeback with
Speaker 1: the invention of the LP. Radio stations would not typically
Speaker 1: play an album in full. They might focus more on singles,
Speaker 1: which were the songs that producers identified as being the
Speaker 1: most likely hits off an album's worth of music. But
Speaker 1: if you were a fan of a musician or a group,
Speaker 1: you would probably feel compelled to go out and buy
Speaker 1: the album so that you can listen to all the songs,
Speaker 1: not just the one that someone thought were going to
Speaker 1: be the most popular, and you needed a record player
Speaker 1: to do that. By the late nineteen fifties, the market
Speaker 1: had grown enough for a new era to begin. It
Speaker 1: was the Golden Age of vinyl, which would stretch into
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. More to say on that in just
Speaker 1: a minute, but first let's take another quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Now, as I mentioned before, technically a
Speaker 1: turntable is just a component of a larger system. It's
Speaker 1: an element that can convert the information on a vinyl
Speaker 1: record into an electrical signal, which went process through speakers
Speaker 1: turns back into audio information. But it does not have
Speaker 1: its own amplifier or speakers. Right, It's just a component.
Speaker 1: So why would you go for just a turntable instead
Speaker 1: of an all in one player. Well, that started up
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties and it all became the
Speaker 1: region of a group of people we call audio files.
Speaker 1: Audio files, I feel are very special group of human beings.
Speaker 1: They have very strong opinions, sometimes not based on any
Speaker 1: kind of scientifically backed data, but they feel very very
Speaker 1: strongly about them. I'm not saying that their feelings aren't valid.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that sometimes they're not necessarily evidence based.
Speaker 1: But they're very passionate about the listening experience, and it
Speaker 1: was all a question of control and quality. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like building your own computer system. You get to
Speaker 1: choose which components are part of your system, and you
Speaker 1: purchase all the different pieces and you hook them up
Speaker 1: to create the experience you want. So you might favor
Speaker 1: one type of speakers over another. You might say, well,
Speaker 1: these speakers are really good. They have very crisp highs.
Speaker 1: You can hear those high pitches really well. The base
Speaker 1: is really strong, there's very little hiss. These sort of
Speaker 1: elements are really important. If you're an audiophile, you might
Speaker 1: favor one type of amplifier over another. You might be
Speaker 1: super old school and say I only want vacuum tubes
Speaker 1: in my amplified airs. Uh. That's more frequently the realm
Speaker 1: of professional musicians, particularly in the realm of guitar amplifiers.
Speaker 1: But you might occasionally find an audio file who also
Speaker 1: argues that You also might discover the specific configuration of
Speaker 1: different components produces exactly what you feel is the best
Speaker 1: fidelity and sound with a minimum of noise. So a
Speaker 1: new industry grew up around this community, one of high
Speaker 1: fidelity or hi fi sound, And like I said, a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff about hi fi ends up being
Speaker 1: a little wishy washy, And by that I mean there
Speaker 1: are audio files who will argue for hours on end
Speaker 1: the virtues of one setup versus all others. But at
Speaker 1: a certain level of quality, you do reach the limit
Speaker 1: of what human hearing can perceive. So you might be
Speaker 1: able to put together a system that can, on paper
Speaker 1: outperform another system, but both systems are beyond the ability
Speaker 1: for humans to differentiate, which means that ultimately it's pointless.
Speaker 1: You might say, well, this instrumentation shows that that system
Speaker 1: over there is able to represent those lower those lower
Speaker 1: frequencies much more accurately. But if you can't perceive the
Speaker 1: lower frequencies and they aren't really affecting the quality of
Speaker 1: the rest of the sound, it doesn't ultimately matter. Audiophiles, however,
Speaker 1: will argue to the grave that it matters a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a discussion for another day. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: the primary means of rotating the turntable, the actual mechanism
Speaker 1: that would make the platter rotate was using what was
Speaker 1: called an idler drive or a rim drive. A typical
Speaker 1: idler drive had a rubber wheel called the idler and
Speaker 1: that was mounted to the shaft of an electric motor,
Speaker 1: so the motor would rotate the shaft, thus rotating the
Speaker 1: rubber idler wheel, and the idler wheel would be pressed
Speaker 1: against the inner rim of the platter wheel, the actual
Speaker 1: platform that the record turns on. So it would usually
Speaker 1: use something like a tension spring, so it would hold
Speaker 1: the rubber wheel tightly against the platter wheel, and that
Speaker 1: way you would have it nice and nugs so that
Speaker 1: when the rubber wheel turned, it would force the platter
Speaker 1: to rotate. And uh when the electric motor spins that
Speaker 1: eidler wheel, the wheel and turn transfers that rotational force
Speaker 1: to the platter, but in the opposite direction of rotation.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like two gears turning against each other,
Speaker 1: only we're talking about smooth wheels. They don't have teeth.
Speaker 1: That would obviously create another issue. You would have it
Speaker 1: make more noise and it could transmit a lot of
Speaker 1: vibration to the system, so you don't want that. It
Speaker 1: would be a smooth rubber wheel that's doing the turning,
Speaker 1: but otherwise it is a lot like gears moving with
Speaker 1: each other, or if you prefer, it's like if you
Speaker 1: had a bicycle and you had a treadmill, and you
Speaker 1: put the bicycle on top of the treadmill and you
Speaker 1: turn the treadmill on and the belt of the treadmill
Speaker 1: starts to transfer energy to the bike's wheels, causing the
Speaker 1: wheels to rotate. UH. This is similar to what the
Speaker 1: idler drive would do with the platter, and it was
Speaker 1: popular for decades and in fact, there are still UH
Speaker 1: turntables stems out there that use idler drives. But in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties some companies began to introduce a
Speaker 1: new drive system called the belt drive. And as the
Speaker 1: name suggests, a belt drive uses a belt to transfer
Speaker 1: energy from the electric motor to the platter. It's like
Speaker 1: a pulley system. The belt wraps around the platter and
Speaker 1: a pulley that's connected to the shaft of the motor.
Speaker 1: And it's the simplest drive mechanism for turntables. That also
Speaker 1: means it's the cheapest, which also means it's the most
Speaker 1: popular because it doesn't cost as much as other systems. Now,
Speaker 1: some people argue that the belt driven turntables are superior
Speaker 1: to all others because it decouples the platter from the
Speaker 1: electric motor, and the belt or the the line that
Speaker 1: connects the platter to the electric motor absorbs a lot
Speaker 1: of the vibrations that otherwise would be transferred to the
Speaker 1: platter itself, so that could affect sound quality. So there
Speaker 1: are some audiophiles who say the belt systems might be
Speaker 1: the cheapest to implement, but they also create the best
Speaker 1: audio quality. Uh. Some audio files say that's hogwash and
Speaker 1: that there's no evidence that the belt driven systems are
Speaker 1: superior to other driver systems. So debate rages on in
Speaker 1: the audio file circles, as it will forever and ever amend.
Speaker 1: There is a third drive system for turntables. I should
Speaker 1: mention this one came a little bit later, but it
Speaker 1: was really really important for DJs, and for a long
Speaker 1: time it was limited to professional turntables that professional DJs
Speaker 1: or radio stations would use. And it's the direct drive system.
Speaker 1: And in a direct drive system, the motor is directly
Speaker 1: connected to the platter, so you don't have an idler
Speaker 1: wheel that then transfers the motions to the platter. You
Speaker 1: don't have a belt system that transfers motions to the platter.
Speaker 1: The platter itself is mounted on a rotor system of
Speaker 1: some sort, and it will turn in speed end time
Speaker 1: with the actual electric motor, so there's no intermediary there.
Speaker 1: The motor turns the turntable itself. Some direct drives actually
Speaker 1: use a magnetic drive system. The Technic twelve hundred, the
Speaker 1: famous turntable that was favored by professional DJs, uses such
Speaker 1: a drive system. The big benefit of the magnetic drive
Speaker 1: system is that you can manipulate the platter manually without
Speaker 1: damaging the motor. If the motor is trying to turn
Speaker 1: the platter and you stop it or reverse it and
Speaker 1: it's using mechanical elements as opposed to this magnetic drive,
Speaker 1: you could strip out some components of the motor. One
Speaker 1: of the big benefits of direct drive turntables is that
Speaker 1: they get up to speed very quickly, so they reduced distortion.
Speaker 1: You'd hear after doing some sick DJ work like scratching
Speaker 1: or pausing a record, if you pause it by holding
Speaker 1: down on the actual platter so you stop its rotation
Speaker 1: and you let up. With direct drive systems, it gets
Speaker 1: up to speed very very fast, so you have very
Speaker 1: little distortion from a full stop to playing at the
Speaker 1: right speed. Magnetic drives are actually pretty simple because they
Speaker 1: rely on something that electric motors already do. In an
Speaker 1: electric motor, you have two major components. You have the
Speaker 1: stator or statter if you prefer, but stater is typically
Speaker 1: how I heard it pronounced. That's the stationary element of
Speaker 1: the motor. That's the part that's mounted into some sort
Speaker 1: of frame, and then you have the rotor that's the
Speaker 1: element that actually does the rotation. The stater is a
Speaker 1: hollow cylinder essentially that's got uh usually plates of iron
Speaker 1: or steel in it, and that has wire wrapped around
Speaker 1: little protrusions that come down from the center of this cylinder.
Speaker 1: So you can think of it almost like a an
Speaker 1: inverted gear, where the teeth are on the inside of
Speaker 1: the circle, not the outside, and you've got wire wrapped
Speaker 1: around each of these teeth, which represents an electromagnet. And
Speaker 1: the opposite sides of this stator have opposite poles. So
Speaker 1: let's say at the top it's the north pole and
Speaker 1: the bottom it's the south pole. When you pass the
Speaker 1: current through in one direction, what you're using alternating current.
Speaker 1: That means that the current goes back and forth right
Speaker 1: in directions. It goes one direction and then swaps and
Speaker 1: goes the other direction, and it cycles through this hundreds
Speaker 1: of times per second. As it changes direction, the magnetic
Speaker 1: field shifts, so what was the north pole becomes the
Speaker 1: south pole, and vice versa. So you've got that element.
Speaker 1: The rotor also has a conductive coil inside of it,
Speaker 1: and when you place that inside the stator and you
Speaker 1: turn on the electricity, the magnetic field, the fluctuating magnetic
Speaker 1: field inside the stator induces current to flow through the
Speaker 1: coils and the rotor, which creates its own magnetic field.
Speaker 1: And these two magnetic fields end up attracting and repulsing
Speaker 1: each other and creates the rotational force uh that turns
Speaker 1: the rotor. So that's your basic rotor in an electric motor.
Speaker 1: The magnetic turntable systems, the platter itself is the rotor.
Speaker 1: It's the it's mounted on the thing that is freely
Speaker 1: rotating inside of this electric motor itself, so there's no
Speaker 1: other parts to grind down. It's it's just the magnetism
Speaker 1: that keeps the platter from moving, So if you stop it,
Speaker 1: the magnetism element keeps going. It's just your hand is
Speaker 1: stronger than the magnetic force, so you can stop the
Speaker 1: record from from rotating. And when you let go, everything
Speaker 1: is is fine because you don't have any moving parts
Speaker 1: that are grinding against each other. It's just stopped. It's
Speaker 1: like a break for that second, and then you release
Speaker 1: the break and everything can turn again, So that makes
Speaker 1: it much easier to operate without any fear of breaking something. Now,
Speaker 1: jumping back to the nineteen fifties, in engineers figured out
Speaker 1: how to record to stereo in vinyl. Record player manufacturers
Speaker 1: rapidly responded to this development, creating players that could send
Speaker 1: different signals to the left and right channels. Though early
Speaker 1: record players that were stereo record players could not really
Speaker 1: send out truly discrete channels to the left and right speakers,
Speaker 1: so you would have some bleed over. So if you
Speaker 1: were to turn one speaker completely off, uh you would
Speaker 1: still be able to hear a little bit of what
Speaker 1: was supposed to play in that speaker in the other
Speaker 1: one because there was some bleed over. There wasn't It
Speaker 1: wasn't pure left and right channels, Yet at that point.
Speaker 1: Throughout the nineteen sixties, turntable technology evolved. In nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Technics introduced the SP ten that was a direct drive turntable,
Speaker 1: which became an early standard for professionals, and later models
Speaker 1: like the twelve hundred brought the direct drive technology into
Speaker 1: more hands and gave rise to a new art form
Speaker 1: of DJ work. Pioneers like cool Herk, grand Master Flash
Speaker 1: in Africa Bombada began to incorporate performance in music playback,
Speaker 1: using turntables to interactively play up things. Instead of just
Speaker 1: simply queuing up a piece of music, they would create
Speaker 1: their own music and manipul you late music that had
Speaker 1: already been recorded, which was really interesting for the time.
Speaker 1: It still is to me today. I think it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to watch a talented DJ work. So, for example, cool
Speaker 1: Hirk would use two turntables playing copies of the same record,
Speaker 1: and both turntables were hooked up to a mixer, and
Speaker 1: what cool Hirk would do is listen to the one
Speaker 1: album as it's playing while the second one is going
Speaker 1: out to the speakers in the room, and when it
Speaker 1: hit the break in a song like the climax of
Speaker 1: a song. He could swap the mixer over so that
Speaker 1: while that break is ending on album number one, it's
Speaker 1: starting on album number two, and he could just keep
Speaker 1: on extending a segment repeatedly by switching from one copy
Speaker 1: to the other. He could just lift the stylus up
Speaker 1: on album one, put it back a little bit, queue
Speaker 1: it up, and then switch the mixer over again, and
Speaker 1: you could have the break of a song last indefinitely
Speaker 1: this way. Grand Wizard Theodore was one of the early
Speaker 1: d j's to introduce scratching in DJ performances, and Grand
Speaker 1: Master Flash was the first who record such a performance
Speaker 1: on an album, and the song The Adventures of Grand
Speaker 1: Master Flash on the Wheels of Steel from one was
Speaker 1: the first to use scratching on an actual recorded LP
Speaker 1: on purpose at any rate, and not as just a
Speaker 1: comedic effect. By the way, if you've never listened to
Speaker 1: that song, do yourself a favor. Look up The Adventures
Speaker 1: of Grand Master Flash on the Wheels of Steel and
Speaker 1: listen to it, because it is an awesome mashup of
Speaker 1: some amazing songs. Is incredible. The basic setup of two
Speaker 1: turntables and a mixer, not a microphone was the standard
Speaker 1: for DJs for years. A skilled DJ could set up
Speaker 1: a que on one album and get it going with
Speaker 1: the mixer throwing the signal out to the speakers in
Speaker 1: the room, while simultaneously setting up another track to mix
Speaker 1: with it in real time, not just transition from one
Speaker 1: song to another, but to create new music from these
Speaker 1: prerecorded tracks. You could argue convincingly that the hip hop
Speaker 1: genre of music owes its origins to the turntable, which
Speaker 1: is pretty remarkable for a piece of technology that was
Speaker 1: invented to playback music rather than to generate a brand
Speaker 1: new performance in of itself. And that kind of concludes
Speaker 1: the discussion of the analog turntables. There are digital turntables
Speaker 1: out there, and I'll cover those in another episode sometime
Speaker 1: further down the line. Also, analog turntables have continued on
Speaker 1: for a long time. They started to become a niche
Speaker 1: product again largely because there were other form factors that
Speaker 1: came out that began to replace vinyl. You had cassette
Speaker 1: tapes which helped replace vinyl because they were more convenient,
Speaker 1: They were easier to carry around. You could get a
Speaker 1: cassette player for your car. Uh. They meant that you
Speaker 1: could take your music with you much more easily than
Speaker 1: you could with vinyl. So even though the quality of
Speaker 1: cassette tapes for a long time really drag behind vinyl albums,
Speaker 1: the convenience meant more than the sound quality. For a while.
Speaker 1: Then you had compact discs that increase the quality of
Speaker 1: the recording, although again for a while, the digital aspect
Speaker 1: of it a lot of people felt didn't give you
Speaker 1: the same experience as listening to an analog vinyl album. UH.
Speaker 1: There's some arguments that have been made that that a
Speaker 1: good CD player against a good analog record player, the
Speaker 1: comparison is UH is completely in favor of the analog
Speaker 1: record player. There are others who argue that if you
Speaker 1: were to do a double blind test where you're in
Speaker 1: the room you have no idea which system you're listening to.
Speaker 1: The person a ministering the test also doesn't know which
Speaker 1: system you're listening to, then it may be that you're
Speaker 1: not able to tell the difference. Um, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to really really good systems, both for analog and digital. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're sampling digital music at a terrible bit rate,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be able to tell because the quality
Speaker 1: is not going to be there, but an versus digital
Speaker 1: is another argument that will continue on forever, even to
Speaker 1: this day. And of course vinyl albums have made a
Speaker 1: big comeback over recent years. It was to the point
Speaker 1: where if a band put out an album in vinyl
Speaker 1: it was almost like a publicity stunt um because record
Speaker 1: players had gone so out of fashion. But these days
Speaker 1: it's much more common. You see it happen frequently, and
Speaker 1: it it's easy to go out and buy a turntable
Speaker 1: or even a full record player system out on the
Speaker 1: market and to go out and collect vinyl again. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of reissues of old albums that have
Speaker 1: been pressed on new vinyl, so you can actually start
Speaker 1: collecting classic albums again if you wanted to, and not
Speaker 1: have to go digging through old archives of music and
Speaker 1: hope that you find one that isn't all scratched up
Speaker 1: and ruined. So it's a pretty cool time if you
Speaker 1: are a fan of this music format, as i am, um,
Speaker 1: I find that there's something extra with the turntable record
Speaker 1: player approach. It's not necessarily the quality of the music
Speaker 1: that's part of it, but another part of it is
Speaker 1: the experience of listening to a full album instead of
Speaker 1: just skipping to a specific song. Now, digital media make
Speaker 1: it really easy for us to skip over music, whereas
Speaker 1: analog you can't do that quite as easily. You have
Speaker 1: to you have to kind of either pick up a
Speaker 1: stylist and try to figure out where the next song begins,
Speaker 1: or you just sit through it. But in many cases
Speaker 1: that means that you can have a true album experience.
Speaker 1: And also there's a bit of ritual to taking an
Speaker 1: album out of its sleeve, placing it on the platter,
Speaker 1: lifting the stylists, placing it down on the vinyl, hearing
Speaker 1: that that little bit of scratch hiss just before the
Speaker 1: music begins to play. There's something about that that I
Speaker 1: think adds to the experience of enjoying music. Doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: translate to every single track, but I find it really
Speaker 1: soothing in a way, even when I'm listening to my
Speaker 1: punk rock music, which I do often and with great enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: That was a great suggestion for an episode. Big thanks
Speaker 1: for all of you out there who have been asking
Speaker 1: me to cover more music tech. We will continue that.
Speaker 1: We'll do an episode about speakers and headphones, but then
Speaker 1: We'll start to transition to other topics as well, so
Speaker 1: keep an ear out for those episodes will be coming
Speaker 1: up in the near future. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, right to me and tell
Speaker 1: me what they are. The address for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or draw
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: both of those is text stuff h s W. Join
Speaker 1: us on Instagram. You can follow us behind the scenes
Speaker 1: and see all sorts of cool stuff over there. And
Speaker 1: remember I broadcast live on twitch dot tv slash tech
Speaker 1: Stuff on Wednesdays and Friday's. The schedule is up there
Speaker 1: At that website. You can watch me record the show
Speaker 1: live in front of your face. You can join it
Speaker 1: on the chat room and can chat with me as
Speaker 1: I record. I look forward to seeing you and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.