WEBVTT - Media and You: From Records to Film 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.960 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and Welcome to Tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.520 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:19.320 How Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and I love 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:22.680 all things tech, and today I thought I would do 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:26.480 something a little different from my normal episode. So rather 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.800 than tackle a particular technology or tell you about the 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:32.040 history of a tech company, or even go into an 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.080 in depth profile of an innovator, I thought instead I 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.080 would talk about a more broad topic that kind of 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:42.400 delves not just into technology, but into business and into culture. 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:47.120 So it's all about our relationship with media. Specifically, I'm 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.200 going to be focusing on stuff like audio and video 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.599 and how our relationship with that sort of media has 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:58.040 changed as technology has changed over the years. Those changes 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:02.120 have been pushed by innovation and also the entertainment industry's 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:07.800 reaction to innovation and spoiler alert, sometimes the entertainment industry's 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:11.600 reaction was resistance. So I think the story also tells 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.679 us a lot about ourselves, not just the stuff we enjoy, 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.800 but it tells us more about what we value and 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.600 where we can find that balance between art and commerce, 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:28.319 which is a pretty tricky topic. So today we're going 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.759 to look at how tech has changed the way we 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.800 access entertainment. And because this is a large topic, it's 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.399 going to take a few episodes. So we're going to 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:41.960 focus on the early days of modern media in this episode. 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:44.840 So we're gonna actually first start because you know how 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:48.520 I am a couple of centuries ago, before the Industrial 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.760 Revolution and the age of electricity. So first, most people 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.360 didn't have a whole lot of time to spare for entertainment. 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.360 If you were working class, you spend most of your 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.760 waking hours doing work, and even those more elevated in 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.600 social class had limited options for their entertainment. Let's say 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.440 that you were one of those fortunate individuals. You're born 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:14.400 into wealth and social status, so you could go to 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:18.200 where entertainment was happening, such as a theater or an 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:23.200 opera house if you're talking about say seventeenth century or later. Um, 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:28.000 but maybe you go to a tavern, to go into 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.440 a sort of public houses courtyard that's where sometimes various 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.720 entertainments would be performed. Perhaps you could attend a party 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.680 thrown by some fancy person who has decided to host 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.840 entertainers for an evening, or maybe you bring the entertainment 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.360 to you, you host your own fancy party. Perhaps you 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.880 have a string quartet in your palatial estate. Now obviously 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.799 that option is limited to a pretty select group of people. 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:55.880 Or you could take it upon yourself to learn some 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.760 form of entertainment, such as learning to play one or 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:04.960 more instruments. But entertainment was ephemeral. It was momentary. You 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.280 enjoyed it as it was happening, and then it was over. 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:12.359 You had no way to experience it again without reinitiating 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.040 the performance itself. And then of course you're going to 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.680 get a variation on what you've just experienced, since it's 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:23.400 pretty rare that humans can perfectly replicate a performance. So 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:27.560 being a professional entertainer was a challenging gig in those 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:29.400 days too, because there was there was no way to 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:34.520 live off of recordings. You could conceivably publish sheet music 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.800 for your works, but that was challenging too. It was 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:42.240 an industry that was rife with piracy. Because music and 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:44.840 entertainment piracy is not a new thing that has been 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.640 around since the printing press essentially, So take the famous 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:53.200 playwright William Shakespeare. He wrote in the late fifteen hundreds 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:57.400 and early sixteen hundreds. He never published any of his 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:02.480 plays during his own lifetime. Other people sometimes published his plays, 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:05.080 and there were many versions of his plays that were 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:08.000 printed in what we're called quartos. No need to go 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.560 into why, that's more of a history thing. But these 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:15.600 quartos were sometimes based off of partial theatrical scripts. They 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.960 might be based off old drafts that were pieced together 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:22.719 from previous performances, or they might even have been cobbled 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:26.279 together from memory, either by working with an actor or 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:28.920 someone who had attended a performance and then is essentially 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:31.560 trying to recreate it as best they can. So they're 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:36.080 frequently referred to by scholars as being unreliable or bad quartos. 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.359 It wasn't until several years after Shakespeare had died that 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:45.360 an official version of his plays reached publication, so this 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:47.320 was not a common thing. In fact, it wouldn't be 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:51.080 until really Ben Johnson was demanding his plays get published 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.320 a little bit later. So if you were a performer 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:55.520 back in the old days, you either sought out a 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:58.839 patron who would put the bill for your expenses, or 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.320 you would travel around and get hired to play for 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.839 an engagement, or maybe you'd be part of an ensemble 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.680 with an established theater and depend upon a share of 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.600 the box office if you were part time owner of 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.479 that or a part owner of that theatrical company. But 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:16.120 that was about it. Gutenberg's printing press allowed for the 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.120 rise of the publishing industry, so if you were a composer, 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:21.679 you could land a publishing deal and make a little 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.000 bit of money there, although the publishing houses were making 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.600 most of the money. And that's pretty much how things 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:30.520 went until the late nineteenth century, and that's when tons 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.680 of changes happened. The Industrial Revolution was underway and had 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.440 actually really mostly happened by the late nineteenth century, and 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.919 suddenly people had a lot more spare time on their hands. 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:44.920 They could actually dedicate time to recreation and relaxation and entertainment. 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.560 It's also when Thomas Edison and others were changing the 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.360 world by introducing devices uh that could do lots of 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.520 different things. You were getting electric light, electricity in general. 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.320 The birth of radio was right around the corner, and 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:04.040 the birth of the ability to record and playback audio. Now, 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.920 it's not like the record industry immediately popped up after 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:11.279 Edison demonstrated this capability. It took many years to refine 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:13.440 the technology to a point where recording was of a 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.919 high enough quality to serve as a commercial product, and 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:20.000 it also took time to develop a better playback device, 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:22.919 something like the gramophones that you could actually hear the 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:27.920 recording and a decent volume. The gramophone introduced another innovation 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:32.200 that helped create the recording industry, which was the flat disc. 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:36.640 So earlier recordings were made on wax cylinders. The cylinders 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.919 had several disadvantages. One was that they weren't easy to 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.520 mass produce, so you were had limited runs when you 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:45.920 were making these things in the first place. And early on, 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.960 you might make a recording by shouting into the wide 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.280 end of a speaking trumpet, and that would send vibrations 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.640 down the trumpet to a diaphragm in the narrow end 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.479 that had a stylus attached to it, essentially, and the 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.000 vibration would make the stylus carve out a groove in 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.960 a rotating wax cylinder that was moving vertically against well 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.880 rotating and moving vertically against the stylus, so from top 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:14.000 to bottom you would have one long spiral, and the 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:19.000 variations of indentation would be the representation of sound but 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.040 this was not a terribly efficient way to make recordings. 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:24.480 Edison vound ways to improve the system, but it was 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.120 still hard to make a lot of cylinders at once. 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:29.880 It just wasn't the right format. On top of that, 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.880 wax cylinders were fairly bulky. You couldn't store a ton 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:36.640 of them on a shelf, for example, and they weren't 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.640 very durable. After a couple of dozen playbacks, the quality 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.120 on the recording would degrade to the point where it 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:45.760 could be unintelligible. And also they couldn't hold very much 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.840 recorded audio in the first place. They were limited just 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.360 a few minutes. So a guy named Emil Berliner came 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:55.280 up with the flat disc. If you listen to my 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.960 episode about the history of the turntable, I talked about Berliner. 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.440 I also will be repeating some of the information from 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.600 that episode, but it's important to establish it to understand 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:08.720 our relationship with media. So to make a recording on 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.520 a flat disc originally anyway, he would take a master 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:15.480 disc made out of metal and he would code it 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:18.880 with lamp black, which is sort of like dipping the 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:23.200 disc in ink while recording. There'd be a stylus that 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:28.160 would drag against this disk in a spiral from the 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.880 outside edge to the inside edge of this disc. So 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.400 if you've ever seen a record album, vinyl record album, 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:37.720 that's how the grooves go from the outside and they 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.680 work their way in same sort of thing. Now, while 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.439 it was recording, this stylus would make little lateral oscillations, 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:46.960 meaning it would shake side to side a little bit 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:52.400 as the sound was impacting the diaphragm attached to the stylus. 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.160 This is an opposition to wax cylinders those relied on 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.720 vertical oscillations. The essentially think of the stylus as going 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.400 in or out of the wax, so it's digging deeper 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.439 or it's not digging as deeply as the sound is 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.920 hitting it. This version, the the disc version was going 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:12.760 left right, not up and down, So the stylus would 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.440 essentially wipe away a little bit of the lamp black. 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:17.280 So at the end of the recording you would have 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.440 this disc that's mostly black, but you would have a 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:24.880 spiral of metal showing through the black surface where the 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.800 stylus had had scraped off the lamp black. Essentially, then 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.720 Berliner would take this disc and dip it into an 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.240 acid bath, and that would eat away at the exposed metal, 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.640 leaving the lamp blacked metal untouched. You're lifted out of 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:42.400 that acid bath, you wipe it down, and you have 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:48.439 essentially a master recording. Berliner then could use a process 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.280 called electroplating to create a negative image of this master, 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:57.520 the negative image meaning that the copy of it would 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:01.880 have the groove turned into a raised ridge on the negative. 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.400 So what was a a indented groove on the master 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:08.679 is now a raised ridge that would actually be used 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.120 as a stamp, and you could stamp blank discs with 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:16.320 this master or this master stamp, and thus transfer the 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:20.800 master recording two copies. And that meant that Berliner's approach 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.040 was better suited for mass production. It gave it a 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:27.439 big advantage over wax cylinders. A bit later, innovators combined 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:31.600 Berliner's mass production method with the practice of recording on wax, 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.720 because recording on wax was easier and created a better 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:41.360 quality recording than Berliner's approach with the lampblack uh. This 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.600 was a method that Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Tainter 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.800 had developed, and so that was on wax cylinders back 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.840 in the day. Now they're transferring it over to wax discs, 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.240 and the result was a mass producible recording method that 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.600 was able to produce good enough sound quality to allow 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.920 for amercial application of the technology. So at the turn 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.679 of the twentieth century, so right around nineteen the companies 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.199 making the playback devices, namely the Gramophone and Typewriter Company, 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.400 began to sell home grammophones with the help of recordings 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.079 of famous musicians and singers. The allure was really strong 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.640 because not everyone had the means or opportunity to hear 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.679 someone like Enrico Caruso sing, but with a gramophone and 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:30.040 a record, you could reproduce him singing in your own home. 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:34.200 Some of those early recordings were so popular that they 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:37.520 would have to be re recorded because the master recording 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:41.440 would wear out. The master stamp would wear out after 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.640 a certain number of pressings, so that also led to 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.440 the industry developing a new method in order to create 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.560 multiple stamps from a single master recording. That way, when 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.880 one wore out, they would still have another backup master 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.760 stamp to go with, and they wouldn't have to worry 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.280 about having to rerecord or the whole thing, because it 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:03.280 would just mean that you have two different recordings of 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.640 the same piece, and one might actually be better than 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:08.760 the other, and maybe that the first recording was better 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.360 or maybe the second one, but either way they wouldn't 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.800 be exactly the same. Now this time around, you started 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:21.040 seeing recording companies emerge. Victor and Colombia were big ones, 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.520 and from the turn of the century until about nineteen five, 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.160 all recordings were made by playing or singing or speaking 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:33.560 into that wide end of a trumpet, a physical trumpet. 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:38.520 This was the mechanical approach to recording. This was before 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:42.920 the electric microphone was used in recording sessions, and there 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:46.720 were engineering challenges that made this pretty tough. If you 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:49.559 were really close to the horn, creating what was known 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:53.719 as a forward recording, then your performance would sound more 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:57.920 vivid and dynamic. You're you're closer to that diaphragm that's 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:02.800 actually transferring the vibration through the stylus to the recording media, 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.800 usually a wax disc. But the nature of those vibrations 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.120 recorded on the disc meant that the discs you'd produce 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.559 later would tend to wear out faster. They were deeper cuts. 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.880 They were using a material called shellac at the time, 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:21.480 which was hard and brittle, and fairly thin um, and 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:26.200 so those deeper recordings would mean that if you were 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.560 to play this playing it back on a turntable, each 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:31.520 time you've laid it back, it was adding more wear 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.520 and tear to the disc, and so those discs wouldn't 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.520 last as long. The sound quality would be better, but 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.520 they wouldn't last very long compared to other discs. So 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.200 if you recorded further away from the horn, you would 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:46.520 have a more muted sound, but it would also mean 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:51.120 that those grooves weren't quite so extreme, so the produced 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:53.440 discs would actually last longer. So it's something you had 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:58.120 to balance out. Uh. The technologies limitations also dictated the 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.680 type of content that could go on them, and thus 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:05.960 it shaped the development of music itself. Early recordings had 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.000 to be short. Early wax cylinders and discs had a 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:12.160 capacity to hold just a couple of minutes of a recording. 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:16.880 Engineers worked on refining the recording technology and the capacity 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.040 slowly increased, but it was still hovering it around five 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.760 minutes per disc or cylinder in the nineteen twenties. Rarely, 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.240 sound engineers would work with musicians to play a piece 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.280 faster than the normal arrangement, just so it would fit 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:35.040 on a side of a recording, so you might hear 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:38.240 about that. It didn't happen as frequently as some people 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:41.560 tend to talk about, but it was something that occasionally 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.560 happened where maybe you had a piece that would last 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:47.720 typically five minutes fifteen seconds, but you're limited to four 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.720 minutes forty five seconds per side of a recording, so 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.640 rather than try and split it up, you just speed 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.200 up the tempo and play it faster than you normally would. 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:00.760 That did happen occasionally, but other times they might work 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.720 with a composer or a musician to tweak a recording, 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:07.400 to to tweak the the arrangement of the music so 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:09.640 that they could create a transition in such a way 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.120 that there would be a natural pause that would allow 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:14.360 you to turn a disc over or to put on 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:17.680 a second or third, or fourth or whatever disc on 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:21.800 the playback device. So here we have our first really 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:26.480 interesting example of how technology truly changed music, and not 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:32.880 just by increasing its accessibility. The recorded media format dictated 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.200 the form. If you were to compose a piece specifically 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:38.640 to record it, you know, you're not just putting something 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.520 that already exists to a recording, but you're writing to 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.560 the format, you would have to work within the limitations 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:46.840 of the medium. You couldn't have a piece be too 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:49.480 soft in volume because it wouldn't be loud enough to 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:53.600 transfer the vibrations to the recording horns stylist, so you 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:56.240 couldn't also be meat loaf. You couldn't write a fourteen 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.960 minute epic ballad because the physical space on the red 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.800 warding blanks wasn't enough to fit that many grooves onto 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:08.200 a side. These limitations would carry on even as technology improved, 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:13.320 and it's largely why most popular songs these days averaging 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.000 at around three minutes in length. It's not because that's 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:19.080 about as long as people want to listen to a song. 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.760 It's because back in the old days, three minutes was 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.720 about what you had to work with, give or take. 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.280 Longer pieces required several discs to make a complete recording, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.640 and it wasn't unusual for a single long piece to 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:37.360 spend nine or more disks on one piece of music, 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.120 not multiple songs. But you think of some of those 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.520 classical pieces, like a symphony that can go on for 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:47.440 quite a while. You might have nine, ten eleven disks 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:52.600 representing one symphony. The industry standard recording in playback speed 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:55.640 was for the disk to spend at seventy eight revolutions 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:59.080 per minute or seventy eight rpm, and that started at 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:04.719 around five as the industry standard. This actually wasn't anything 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.520 necessarily to do with sound quality or anything like that. 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:12.840 It was literally a convenience because there was a plentiful 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:17.480 number of thirty six hundred rpm motors that you could 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:21.160 get your hands on if you wanted to build a 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.399 U turntable, and then you would use a forty six 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:28.480 tooth gear to scale down that revolutions per minute and 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:30.720 you would end up giving getting so many eight revolutions 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:34.240 per minute. So typically you would store all the discs 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.719 from a single recording in a folder with pockets for 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:42.240 every disk, and those folders were called albums. Look kind 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.200 of like a photo album. You would have a disc 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:50.600 album that represented one full recording of whatever piece it was, 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.520 and that's why we call them albums. Now, after the 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.480 First World War, radio began to emerge, and that offered 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:01.280 up an alternative to owning a gramophone at home. Instead 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.080 of buying a gramophone and records, you could purchase a 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.160 radio and listen to stations. Some of the stations would 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.560 also play recordings. You wouldn't be able to listen to 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:13.240 what you wanted when you wanted, but you'd also have 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.600 the potential to access a much larger library of recordings, or, 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.840 depending upon the station, you could be listening to live performances. 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:23.919 In fact, a lot of radio stations depended more on 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:30.120 live performances than recordings because radio, unlike the recording industry 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:34.080 at the time, was reliant on electric electric microphones, so 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.639 those were much better at picking up a dynamic range 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.280 of sounds. They could pick up quiet stuff, they could 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.640 pick up a loud stuff. They were much more versatile 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:46.920 for recording sessions. You didn't have to be right up 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:52.240 on the horn. They're amazing photos of of uh, small 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:57.960 orchestras or bands all just crowded around the horn of 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.199 a recording device in order to play their music into it. 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:03.639 And you always had to put the quieter instruments up 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.199 towards the front or else they'd be overpowered by the 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:08.959 louder instruments. There wasn't as big a concern with that 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.680 with electric microphones. They were much better at picking up 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.680 those dynamic ranges, so you didn't have to worry about 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:20.320 having everybody right up ons that that horn. So radio 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:25.280 performances tended to be superior to recorded music on disk, 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:28.960 and you started to see more people kind of gravitate 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.479 towards the radio than the recorded media. So this was 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:36.920 another shift the way that technology was changing our behavior, 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.920 and the recording industry started to experiment with using electric 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.560 microphones as well. They saw the need to respond to 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.439 this new threat of radio. All right, now, when we 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:50.160 come back, i'll talk about how some improvements in recording 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.879 technology got the industry back in the game and changed 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:54.920 how we think about media. But first, let's take a 0:19:55.000 --> 0:20:05.120 quick break. In the nineteen twenties, a pair of engineers 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:09.560 from Bell Telephone Laboratories would revolutionize sound recording. They were JP. 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.000 Max Field and HC. Harrison, and they had already applied 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:17.080 their ingenuity to making telephones a viable technology. They subjected 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:20.520 the process of sound recording and replication to scientific study 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:24.120 for the first time. In August ninety six, they published 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.640 the results of their work in a paper titled High 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.080 Quality Recording and Reproducing of Music and Speech, which you 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.200 can find online. If you are so inclined, you could 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:34.400 read the whole thing. It's not a very long paper either. 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.560 Max Field and Harrison demonstrated that using electronic means of 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:43.280 recording would produce higher quality results than the mechanical acoustic 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:46.560 method that had been in use. Microphones for orchestras could 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:50.439 be placed a bit further away from the musicians, so 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:52.560 again they didn't have to be crowded around the horn, 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.520 and microphones can capture the sound quality of the room 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:58.480 where the recording is made, and that generated what the 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:01.919 two engineers would refer to as room tone, which is 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:04.840 still a thing. In fact, we actually try to remove 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.720 room tone from our recording so that you get a 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:11.520 cleaner sound. But it was thought of as a valuable thing. 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.679 It it gave another quality to music, and so it 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.680 was something that was considered an interesting thing to capture 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:21.399 at the time. Interestingly, in that paper, Maxfield and Harrison 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:26.000 argue that for playback devices, particularly for home playback devices, 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.720 a mechanical system might be preferable to one using electricity 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.560 for sound reproduction. So recording sound you want to use 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:35.280 an electric microphone, but playing it back they didn't think 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:37.919 it was that important. So with the mechanical system, you 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:40.479 have the stylist that vibrates as it travels through the 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.080 grooves of a disk, and those vibrations transferred to a diaphragm, 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:46.879 which in turn vibrates and changes the air pressure inside 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:49.640 a horn, and then we hear those fluctuations of air 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:53.200 pressure as sound. But that's a direct path. The alternative 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:55.879 is to have the stylus transfer those vibrations to a 0:21:55.920 --> 0:22:00.600 device that can transform the physical vibrations into electrical impulses, 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.240 send those impulses to an amplification system to boost the 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:07.639 very weak signal that the stylus generates, and use that 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:11.320 boosted signal to drive some other element to vibrate, essentially 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:13.879 a speaker, and to create the sound we'd hear. Now, 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.800 due to the limitations of technology at the time, that 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:21.560 really wasn't a viable approach for home electronics. It wouldn't 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:26.360 be till later, when speakers and amplifiers were more available 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:29.080 that that would become viable. The paper led to a 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:32.639 new method of recording called the Western Electric Recording System 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:36.199 or West TREKS, and the results were pretty fantastic for 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.040 the time. Suddenly a recorded piece of music or spoken 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.560 word could stand up to the quality herd over live 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:46.560 radio performances. Recording companies like Victor and Columbia quickly adopted 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.040 the new methodology. But these recording companies were not eager 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:52.879 to stick with the Western Electric system for a couple 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:55.840 of big reasons. One was that the recording companies weren't 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:59.840 allowed to purchase a recording system outright. Western Electric would 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:03.720 only lease the systems, so that was an ongoing cost. Secondly, 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:08.399 Western Electric demanded a royalty fee for every record sold 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.680 that had been made through the Western Electric process. And 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:15.480 let me tell you something, folks, nothing drives innovation more 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:19.720 than money does. Genius has its place, but money makes 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:22.959 the world go round, and companies often find great incentive 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:25.760 to innovate when it could mean keeping more of the 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.480 cash for the company itself. So the recording companies were 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:32.480 all at work trying to create alternatives to the Western 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:35.439 Electric system to get the same results, but through a 0:23:35.440 --> 0:23:38.400 different approach. They had to be careful that their own 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:43.000 methodologies were distinct from Western Electric in order to avoid 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:47.280 infringing upon patents, and so alternate methods began to emerge, 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:50.879 and these in turn created recordings with slightly different qualities 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:53.919 to them, so you could, in theory, record the exact 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:57.480