The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.