epigramophone wrote:
The writer acknowledges the possibility that the films of 1920 might "dim with the process of years", but had no way of knowing how the nitrate film stock would degrade and become dangerously combustible.
Shellac records are more resilient, but if the ones mentioned in the article were kept in some damp attic there will be not much left to be heard.
The cylinders had a similar fate to nitrate films, being breeding grounds for soap-eating fungii that destroyed most of them. Even the celulloid ones have the weakness of the mechanical stress of the different materials between playing surface and the rigid liner (Blue amberols and indestructibles tend to break if exposed to less than stable environment)