Command Performance - 1942 (shows 78s being made)

[recordo]

Here's a link to the 1942 RCA-Victor promotional documentary, "Command Performance". Great film of the whole process of recording, electroplating and pressing.

http://www.glennamer.com/amer/Command_Performance.html

Hope you like it!

Regards, Glenn.

[srqwebguy]

Glenn, Thanks. That was great. Sort of an early "How It's Made". My father worked as an electrical engineer at the RCA Camden plant from 1953 until 1971. I recognized that building instantly! I will send the link to him. He'll enjoy it, I am sure.

[Phototone]

That putting a coat of recording wax onto a metal backing plate is somewhat different from the thick wax blanks used in the early years.

[Tinkerbell]

Wow, Glenn, that was really interesting to watch. Thank you for sharing it!

[recordo]

thanks for your comments - I think it's a great film! Regards, Glenn.

[gregbogantz]

That Victor video is interesting to me for a couple of reasons as I worked at the RCA Records manufacturing plant in Indianapolis from 1973 until the press floor closed at the end of 1987. By then, we were no longer making 78s, much less any records from shellac. All record production was vinyl until around 1983 when we shifted the 7 inch 45rpm records to injection-molded styrene.

The metal matrix operations were considerably simplified for vinyl production from those shown in the 1942 video. Mastering was done on "lacquers" which were nitro-cellulose coated aluminum discs rather than being done in wax. Some of the steps described in the video, particularly the soldering of the stampers to a backing plate were no longer necessary - the stamper was made thick enough of electroformed nickel to mount directly into the record press. The narrator is slightly in error as he describes a few more dips into the nickel plating baths than were used. Rather than being put into the nickel bath directly after separation of the metal parts, the part to be replicated was placed into an electrocleaning bath, then into a "passivation" bath to form a molecular oxide layer onto the part so that when it next went into the nickel bath, the parts could be separated later. Without the passivation, the new plating would solidly bond to the original nickel.

The other interesting part of this video is at the end when the finished record is shown being put onto a record changer. The machine pictured is an RCA V-225 which was a top of the line model in the 1942 model year. It is unique in that it was the only player to use the RP-151 record changer which plays both sides of the record. This feature is not shown in this video, but you can see the changer first dump its previously-played record down into the spent record chute (similar to the way the old 10-50 changer does) and then drop the next record from the stack onto the tiny turntable (only the diameter of a 78rpm record label). The tonearm had two heads, one played the top side of the record and the other played the bottom side. These are bizarre changers and were used only on this one model of radio/phono set, so they are pretty scarce to find today.

[Flvice]

Thanks for sharing... That was great...

[Brad]

I just got around to watching this. Very interesting.

-It was interesting seeing all the historical stampers. Too bad that most of those were left in the building when it was demolished. The Library of Congress or the Smithsonian should have stepped in. Criminal!

-Being a teenager and yuppie in the era of the Half speed mastered and pre-CD, it was interesting seeing everything handled by bare hands and attacked with hammers and files. It goes against everything we believed in those days

One question I had. Towards the end when they were in the shipping department showing the records getting sleeved and boxed, then mentioned that the records were "powdered". What did they powder them with and why?

[gregbogantz]

Brad, I watched the video again to make sure: I don't find any mention of the records being "powdered" as they were being packed. The narrator says that they are "polished" as they are sleeved. This is an exaggeration - the shellac 78s were quickly wiped with a cloth, probably to remove dust or shards remaining from the edge grinding process. Victor shellac records (unlike the later Columbias and others) EACH had their edges sanded smooth to a rounded finish (you see the operation in the video) which probably left some dust on the record. This smooth edge is why Victor records were the only ones recommended by record changer manufacturers of 1930s models that employed the "slicer" knives to singulate records from the stack. The knives in the slicers coped fairly well with the smooth, rounded edges of Victors, but they would get stuck in the rough edges of other brands and often split, crack, or broke those records with rough edges. By the time vinyl records came into existence in the postwar years, the slicer changers were pretty much obsolete and edge grinding was abandoned, although you'll find some of the late vinyl 78s and the early LPs from around 1950 that still have sanded, rounded edges.

[Brad]

LOL - I went back and listened to that segment 3 times and I still heard "powdered" so I asked my wife what she thought he said and she heard "counted". I played it again and sure enough it was "counted"!

I guess hearing the wrong thing has existed since the beginning of recorded sound.