arsclist How many 78s?

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Frank Forman here:

A project of putting classical 78s on http://www.mp3.com/78rpm is very
slowly getting under way. I have a lot of C-90s to lend toward this
end. Don't know how many classical 78s there were. English Columbia and
HMV were the biggest labels. American Columbia recorded rather few
classical on its own, as opposed to reissuing English Columbias. Ditto, to
I think a lesser extent for Victor for HMVs.

Dirty estimates (counting missing discs in the numerical sequence):
Columbia (from Voices of the Past):
D (10"): 240
LB (10"): 152
L: 1274
LX: 1621
Other series: a few hundred (say 500)

HMV (Also from Voices of the Past):
C: 4180
D: 2112
E (10"): 610
DA (10"): 1989 and, say 400 issued in specific countries only
DB: 3949 and also, say, 500 issued in specific countries only

Columbia 3787 + HMV 13740 = 17527.

But there were other Columbias and HMVs and of course all the other
labels. My guess is that the grand total, in 12" equivalent, for classical
music runs under 10^5 discs. The popular/classical for Victor is about
10. All 78s may run about a million.

How many TerraBytes, at an mp3 compression of 8:1, would this be? My guess
is 64 TB, which would now run about $64,000. In ten years it would be
chump change.

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