COLUMBIA RECORDS ANNOUNCES NEW LONG-PLAYING RECORD

Not all records were made to be broken. On this day in 1948, at a news conference at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, CBS board chairman Ted Wallerstein announced that Columbia Records had come up with a new “long-playing” record format that would spin at 331⁄ revolutions per minute (RPM), to be made from unbreakable Vinylite. The industry standard at the time was 78 RPM discs made of brittle shellac. More important than the LP’s durability was its capacity to hold as much as 221⁄ minutes of music a side, compared with 78s, which had room for only five. It was a revolution in revolutions. The LPs were cheaper to purchase, too: Where a package of five 78s containing a complete symphony would cost more than $7, one 12-inch LP featuring that same symphony would cost less than $5. The first vinyl 331⁄ disc issued was Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor played by Nathan Milstein with Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York. The new album format was a hit; the last U.S.-made 78 record was produced in 1959.