Re: [ARSCLIST] LP pressing question

[Michael Shoshani <mshoshani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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