Possible misinformation on shellac record composition from Google

[Thatphonographguy]

For starters, I acknowledge that not everything on the Internet is correct. Clearly. Especially in regards to Googles sometimes idiotic AI Overview. In my view, AI simply stands for Absence of Intelligence. In any case. The subject here pertains to shellac record composition. While researching this subject, I stumbled across a bit on Googles AI Overview that suggested that early records, which Google refers to as "lacquer records", used asbestos as a filler. While this is not technically impossible, I've never heard of such. Not here or anywhere else. It would make little sense to use asbestos as a filler when cotton would've been cheaper as a reinforcing agent and any fire retardant properties that asbestos would provide would be negated by the shellac matrix being as non heat resistant as it is. Has anybody actually come across anything that could substantiate this claim through period literature?

[recordmaker]

Courtney Bryson " The Gramophone Record" 1935 lists all the components the might be compounded to make a disc. asbestos is not listed any of these or the formulae.
It is mentioned in passing as being used in some other products in moulded plastics but notes that is does not bind to shellac well. I assume this would make it incompatible with record manufacture.

Cotton flock and even rabbit fur are mentioned, the problem noted in the book about fibers is that after a while they draw the moisture in to the disc surface and spoil it.
The general the author prefers to avoid fibers even if they have a tendency to toughen the records a little.

Cotton flock is quoted in general mixes at a rate or 3 to 4% by weight

Of the 20 or more contemporary shellac recipes I have to hand none include asbestos.

AI trawls information with out discretion I think it may be confusing this with bitumen and asbestos in early moulded battery cases.

[Thatphonographguy]

Makes perfect sense. Thank you for your reply. I noticed that the link that the AI Overview provides for the information takes you to 2 different sites. One is a site called CykelKurt which states "Records appeared around 1900. They were made of asbestos and shellac and were called lacquer records." The second link takes you, unshockingly, to Mesothelioma.net which provides information that basically says the same thing as CykelKurt and I suspect that they got their information there. I'm chocking it all up to unsubstantiated misinformation at this point, as you and every other source of information I've ever gotten from here and anyplace else except the AI nonsense suggests no such formula ever existed. None of the Berliner formulas or later Duranoid formulations suggest asbestos either. Appreciate this again.

[Starkton]

Some historical sources actually mention asbestos and falsify the statements of the AI.

In his Munich dissertation of 1906, Edward Wheeler Scripture, a multi-award-winning US-American experimental psychologist and phonetician, wrote about his investigations of vowel curves, mainly using gramophone recordings. He literally described the record material as “a substance consisting of asbestos and shellac.”

You can certainly get this idea if you just look at the composition under the microscope. In this photo I took of a solvent-damaged Victor Toy Record from 1901, the grooves and the fiber material are clearly visible.

[Inigo]

It is perfectly possible, in the long story of the 78s, that any manufacturer at any time might have used it. There were so many patents related to shellac record compositions... and from many different countries.

[Thatphonographguy]

Some historical sources actually mention asbestos and falsify the statements of the AI.

In his Munich dissertation of 1906, Edward Wheeler Scripture, a multi-award-winning US-American experimental psychologist and phonetician, wrote about his investigations of vowel curves, mainly using gramophone recordings. He literally described the record material as “a substance consisting of asbestos and shellac.”

You can certainly get this idea if you just look at the composition under the microscope. In this photo I took of a solvent-damaged Victor Toy Record from 1901, the grooves and the fiber material are clearly visible.

Could the substance shown simply be cotton flock or something else, such as dust getting mashed into the record as the solvent damaged it? In the absence of an actual formula that could've given Scripture such an idea, it simply seems unsubstantiated. No surviving formula or formulas even suggest such a combination. of course, I've never stumbled on any of the Duranoid formulas either, the company which Berliner and Victor both used simultaneously for their shellac compounds. We may never know, or perhaps the info is out there and I've not yet come across it. It would make little sense that any record company would choose to use expensive asbestos, a material with no superior strengthening quality over cotton when bound in a matrix. I may need to start a project to get to the bottom of this. There's much mystery over early record composition formulas. Most were kept secret on purpose, though the function is all the same. 100 and more years on, when it no longer matters whether such formulas are kept secret or not, it would be interesting to find out.

[Inigo]

If I'm not being cheated by my failing memory of my imagination... Could I have read somewhere that the first Pathé records made of cement carried some asbestos in their composition?

[Victroid]

I haven’t found any evidence of asbestos being used in any phonograph records, but asbestos does make things more durable, and a lot of people didn’t know that asbestos caused cancer at the time, so, it’s perfectly possible!

[Thatphonographguy]

So I've begun doing what I should've been doing all along: patent surfing. I've come across several patents, ranging from the teens through the 40s, for resins alternative to shellac which include asbestos as a possible ingredient, but other alternatives were also accepted, so who knows. One German patent from the '10s suggests using recording blanks of asphalt and asbestos, this of course isn't the finished product, but just a suggestion for a medium useful for recording upon before being etched for stamping. One patent from just after the turn of the century describes using a disc of asbestos or other fibrous material, employed as the backing material for single sided disc records, whereby the shellac compound of any desired formula passes through the disc of fibrous material, asbestos being the preferred medium, forming the backing and allowing records to be manufactured quicker due to the heat dissipation quality of asbestos. Later patents, alternatively to using asbestos as the actual backing of the record, suggest a sheet of asbestos be placed between the upper record die and press for quicker dissipation of heat, never coming in actual contact with the record itself.
HOWEVER. I also stumbled upon a patent submitted in 1920 and granted in 1923 to Victor Emerson of Emerson Phonograph Company, in which asbestos is actually part of the record. He describes an economy in which shellac has become quite expensive, so following in the footsteps of Columbia, he begins using the process of phonograph record lamination. His only disagreement with previous methods of lamination is the core material: paper. He believes paper is simply too thin of a core material, and has a tendency to lift when the record press is lifted. His alternative was a disc of what he described as sheets of "asbestos wood", more commonly known as asbestos cement sheets. His argument was that it was "incompressible", being already compressed by pressure magnitudes higher than the pressure exalted by the record press. He described having the thin asbestos cement sheets die cut to the correct size. From here, a disc of die cut paper of the corresponding size is glued to the asbestos cement disc. This was to cut down on noise caused by the imprint of the asbestos fibers protruding through the shellac and to also prevent the alkali of the cement, which the asbestos was bound in, from disintegrating the shellac over time. From here, hot discs of malleable shellac compound are placed on both sides of the paper covered asbestos cement disc and run through the record press. SO. At the very least, the cores of the laminated Emerson records post 1920 are made of asbestos. I found a few other patents, as well, which subsequently describe using asbestos as the core of laminated records. However, they describe formulas for the composition of these cores, rather than using a previously prepared product like Emerson did. I still have yet to find proof positive that any record manufacturer used asbestos in the playing surface of shellac. Additionally, many of the patents which describe the possibility of using asbestos in the composition of records, seem to discourage the idea of using ANY fibrous filler for the playing surface as it causes excess noise and distortion. This does not mean that some company didn't at least try this method in an effort to toughen their records. I've just yet to find any proof of such, and I believe it to be quite unlikely. There are still several hundred patents to filter through.