I'm engaged in other matters so can't do the research, but remember reading
(Johnson's son's book? Sooey diaries?) That it was shown to Victor in early
1924 or late 1923. Their engineering staff rejected it. Columbia took it.
Then Victor took it.
This makes sense because Victor was using the WE formulas to design the
acoustic Orthophonic speaker and would have been aware of the recording
process of which that formula was also a component. The WE experimental
tests of records go back to at least 1923 (I have one) and, given it's
number, probably to late 1922.
I would love to see the notebook that WE used to record these tests in. I'd
heard it was at the Sarnoff Museum but when I went there about 6 mo before
it closed, it was not in their library or catalog.
Steve Smolian
-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Brylawski
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 10:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Early electrical disk recording
Thanks for this Mike. I don't recall seeing the Wheeler book reviewed in
the Journal. Can you tell us more about it? In that it carries a $95 price
tag your assessment of its research value would be appreciated by all of us.
Sam
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Michael Biel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
--SNIP--
> There is no evidence that Western Electric ever showed their system to
> either Victor or Columbia before Nov or Dec 1924. It certainly would
> have been mentioned in the Hewitt lab notebooks. Columbia signed the
> contract with Western Electric on Feb 26, 1925 -- and this contract has
> just been published in facsimile by *Geoffrey Wheeler in his new book
> about the legal (and illegal) history of Columbia Records.* It looks
> like four masters by Art Gillham beat the contract by a day, but he did
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