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Re: [ARSCLIST] LP pressing question
Keller wrote an autobiography which presents the British side of this issue.
Steve Smolian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Shoshani" <mshoshani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
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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