Hi Lucius,
That idea of trying to find some other "more modern"
type of plastic which could be used for cylinder blanks
is a very tough call.
About the only thing that might work and might make
sense would be some sort of an acetate compound such
as was used on the one-time recordable 78 rpm discs
which were popular in the 1940s and 50s for use on
those small portable disc recording machines.
That would work if it was acceptable to have
only one chance to make a recording. Those cannot be shaved and re-used.
Same for the thin red plastic which was used for
the "Dicta-Belt" dictation machines of the late 1940s
and early 1950s. I just recently learned that that
same kind of thin flexible red plastic was used for
the recordable Edison "Diamond Discs" of that same
era.
That came as a bit of new info to me, that the Edison
company apparently recycled the "Diamond Disc" trademark
name again at that late date. I just saw a picture of
2 of those thin, red, translucent "Diamond Discs".
Not to be confused with the old Diamond Discs we all
know and love. These are thin, red, translucent and
recordable on a much later dictation machine.
Anyway, I just wanted to underscore how difficult it
is to have a compound which:
1) Is sensitive enough to record well.
2) Still be hard and resilient enough to be played back
a great number of times.
3) Stand up to wild variations in temperature and humidity without changing or blooming or oozing out glycerin droplets on hot days.
4) Creates a blank cylinder which can be shaved
and re-recorded many times.
5) And most important of all: Have very low surface noise.
That is a very tall order indeed!
Those fellows back in Edison's lab back in the 1890s
did thousands of experiments to come up with the
brown wax we still use now. They worked on it for
years. There were a lot of very highly educated and
experienced men who worked full time on this for
many years before arriving at the metallic soap
compound we still use now to make these blanks.
I seriously doubt that there is any modern polymer
compound which will give the same performance as the
good old brown wax.
If there is, it would take a modern research
laboratory and a staff of degreed chemists working
full time for at least a few years to find it.
Who has the money to set up that laboratory and hire
all those guys and pay their salaries until they find
this?
I don't have that kind of cash on hand, otherwise I
would be doing exactly that right now!!
Chuck
