Keller wrote an autobiography which presents the British side of this issue.

Steve Smolian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Shoshani" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] LP pressing question


> Tom Fine wrote:
>> One thing you'll find is that AT&T patented 45-45 2-channel disk
>> recording in the early 1930's. That patent was assigned to Westrex when
>> AT&T was forced to get out of the recording and motion picture
>> businesses, which is why Westrex had the market cornered on early stereo
>> cutters. Another thing worth reading is the AES Journal article by Mr.
>> Roys (?) of RCA describing how the US and European record companies got
>> together and decided to go with the Westrex 45-45 system instead of
>> system developed in the UK, I think at Decca. Basically, market might of
>> the US companies (which had already done the extraordinary step of
>> agreeing on the Westrex standard) won out but Haddey of Decca later told
>> an AES audience that he was convinced technically that the Westrex system
>> was better.
>
> AT&T patented 45/45 2 channel disc recording about the same time that Alan
> Blumlein patented it in England. Blumlein (who was working for pre-EMI
> Columbia) came up both with 45/45 cutting systems and vertical/lateral
> cutting systems independently of the work going on at Bell Labs. Mike Biel
> at 78-L has done tons of research on this and got a chance to interview
> the late Arthur Keller, and if I recall correctly Bell Labs and Blumlein
> were each progressing more or less in ignorance of each others' work. The
> cutters were nearly identical, but Bell Labs perferred to use a spaced
> pair of mics, while Blumlein preferred a coincident pair.
>
> I suspect the Haddy speech to AES used Westrex as a reference simply
> because it was familiar to an American audience. The British Hi-Fi mags of
> the late 50s were up in arms at what seemed to them the US industry's
> proclamation that we here had invented and perfected the Westrex system,
> some of them quoting Haddy as saying it was up to the world industry to
> choose between vertical/lateral and 45/45, because Decca had already fully
> developed BOTH systems. (Decca also had a complex carrier-frequency stereo
> system that would have been cost-prohibitive for the consumer market, so
> it was never developed.)
>
> Michael Shoshani
> Chicago
>
>
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