A short history of the record

The short version: This section follows the record from tinfoil cylinders in 1877 through shellac 78s to Columbia's vinyl LP in 1948 and RCA's 45 in 1949, which split the market into albums and singles. Cassettes and then CDs pushed vinyl to a rounding error by the mid-2000s. Since then US vinyl has grown 19 years in a row, passing $1 billion in revenue in 2025.

Who made the first record?#

Thomas Edison developed the phonograph in 1877 while working on telegraph and telephone equipment; the first machine recorded onto a metal cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, which wore out after a few playings.¹ A diaphragm moved by the voice made a stylus vibrate up and down, pressing a track into the foil. Edison got there by reversing the process of the phonautograph, a device about 20 years older that could trace sound but not replay it, and the Smithsonian calls his machine "the first instrument ever to record and play back sound."²

The often-cited August 12, 1877, is probably too early: historians think the first working recording came later, because the patent application was not filed until December 24, 1877.¹ The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was set up on January 24, 1878, to exhibit the machine, and the patent issued on February 19, 1878.¹ Paid demonstrations followed that spring and summer, and in April 1878 Edison licensed it as an office dictation machine. Sales were poor, production stopped, and Edison did not come back to it until 1888, with 17 new patent applications.²

In the gap, others improved it. C. Bell and Tainter, as the Library of Congress credits them, swapped tinfoil for wax, patenting their graphophone on May 4, 1886. Edison adopted wax cylinders too, forming the Edison Phonograph Company on October 8, 1887, and selling an "Improved Phonograph" by May 1888.¹

The first words on that first 1877 recording were the opening of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," according to ASME.³

Did the cylinder or the disc win?#

The disc won, and Edison eventually said so with his product line. Emile Berliner received his gramophone patent on November 8, 1887, moving from cylinders to what the Library of Congress calls "flat, double-sided zinc discs with spiral grooves." The case for the flat disc was industrial: it could be mass-produced far more cheaply than a cylinder.⁴

Berliner's early discs were a materials lab. The Library of Congress lists experimental zinc discs and very rare celluloid and rubber ones, but most surviving Berliners were pressed from a shellac compound by two outside firms, the Duranoid Company and the Burt Company. The earliest known list of Berliner records is a scrapbook page dated November 1, 1894, and production stopped in 1900.⁵ That year a court injunction shut the Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia; Berliner passed his patent rights to Eldridge Johnson, who formed the Victor Talking Machine Company, with Berliner keeping a financial interest.⁴

Edison announced the Edison Disc Phonograph in 1913, conceding that the public preferred discs. He kept making Blue Amberol cylinders anyway, right up to the company's end in 1929.¹

What were 78s made of, and why do they shatter?#

A shellac 78 is mostly rock dust held together by bug resin. The shellac compound was the resin plus fillers, typically clay, slate or limestone, with carbon black for color and cotton fibers for strength.⁷ "Shellac 78s were produced commercially from 1897 until the late 1950s," per the University of Illinois preservation guide, with use declining steadily after World War II.⁷

The name 78 promises more consistency than the era delivered. Speeds varied (the same guide lists 30, 70 or 78 rpm), and common sizes were 7, 10, 12 and 16 inches.⁷ The Internet Archive's Great 78 Project puts it flatly: "During the 78rpm era there were no standards for speed, stylus size, or record/playback equalization." Its transfer engineer plays every disc at 78.26 rpm, a long-standing trade convention.⁸ Pre-1948 discs mostly have wide coarse grooves; the microgroove records that followed carry nearly twice as many grooves.⁷

How long 78s hung on depended on the country. In Japan, according to Japanese 78 experts relayed on a professional archivists' mailing list, the last new-issue 78s came out in 1958 and reissue pressings continued until production ceased in 1962.⁹ Treat those dates as reported rather than documented.

The last US-issued 78 is claimed to be Chuck Berry's "Too Pooped to Pop" on Chess, released in February 1960, though later ones were almost certainly released on small labels.¹⁰ The same history site reports, citing one source, that EMI deleted 78s from its catalogs in 1962, and says 78 sales were "virtually gone in the US and western Europe by about 1960."¹⁰

When did the LP come out?#

In June 1948, at a press event at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Columbia unveiled the long-playing record. The exact day depends on who you ask: the Library of Congress gives the announcement as June 21, 1948, while a commenter on the same Library of Congress post, citing Billboard from 1948, and the researcher Matsubayashi Kohji's microgroove.jp both give June 18.¹¹

The engineering came first. Peter Goldmark led the Columbia team that perfected the microgroove in the summer of 1947. The first LP catalog number, ML 4001, was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein and the New York Philharmonic under Bruno Walter. Early sides held about 23 minutes; Columbia's 1949 catalog claimed "up to 45 minutes of music on one 12-inch record," made of "nonbreakable Vinylite."¹¹ There was history behind the gamble: Columbia's president, Edward Wallerstein, had earlier halted RCA Victor's failed long-playing disc of the early 1930s.¹¹

The material change mattered as much as the groove. Plastic discs, made of polyvinyl chloride or polystyrene with stabilizers, were developed in the late 1940s and are still the format in use.⁷

Why are records 33 1/3 and 45?#

Because two companies fought for two years and both won. On January 9, 1949, Columbia announced a 7-inch single at 33 1/3. The next day, January 10, RCA Victor introduced its own 7-inch at 45 rpm, code-named "Madame X," with a dedicated changer; the big center hole allowed a smaller changing mechanism.¹² RCA also claimed the 45 used less vinyl compound per pressing.¹²

This was the war of the speeds, and the rest of the industry had to choose. In August 1949 Decca went with the LP and Capitol went with all three speeds. In April 1950 RCA began issuing LPs, and in August 1950 Columbia began issuing 45s.¹² The settlement, per Matsubayashi's history, was no single winner: the LP became the album, the 45 became the single.¹² The formats section covers the sizes and speeds in use today.

What is the RIAA curve, and why does it still matter?#

Every record is cut with the bass turned down and the treble turned up, and every phono preamp undoes it. That deliberate tilt is an equalization curve: cutting less bass keeps the groove from swinging too wide, and boosting treble lifts it above surface noise; playback reverses both. Before 1954 every label could pick its own. Columbia's LP used a curve close to the 1942 NAB standard, and RCA's 45 used its "Old Orthophonic" curve, and the mess helped build support for one standard.¹²

The RIAA curve was approved by the RIAA Technical Committee, with chief engineers of five major US labels, on January 29, 1954, and circulated formally by June 1954.¹³ Matsubayashi calls it "essentially identical" to RCA Victor's New Orthophonic curve, already in use, and kept the 75-microsecond high-frequency setting from the June 1953 NARTB standard, which had replaced NAB's 100 microseconds of 1942.¹³

Adoption was not instant. Radio News reported in July 1954 that RCA Victor, Columbia, Capitol (already using it), London (recutting its back catalog), Decca and MGM (future releases) and Mercury were on board, while Westminster stayed with NAB for the time being.¹³ So a record cut before its label switched was not necessarily cut to the curve a modern phono stage assumes.

Outside the US, per Matsubayashi's history, the British standard BS 1928:1955 adopted characteristics identical to RIAA in 1955.¹⁴ Germany took longer: DIN 45536/45537 of 1959 used a CCIR-based curve with RIAA's bass turnovers but 50 microseconds of treble pre-emphasis, and in 1962 CCIR and DIN moved to 75 microseconds, making the curve identical to RIAA.¹⁴

When did stereo records come out?#

The stereo LP is a two-channel trick inside a single groove (the playing section explains how a stylus reads it), and it went from a lab to an American standard in under six months. Westrex's experimental 45/45 cutter, which carves the left and right channels on the two walls of one groove, each at 45 degrees, dates to July 12, 1957. It was shown to engineers at Westrex's Hollywood lab on August 26, demonstrated at the Audio Engineering Society's ninth convention in New York on October 11, and formally adopted by the Record Industry Association of America as the US standard on December 27, 1957, according to a 1975 account by the former Westrex recording equipment manager.¹⁵

The first single-groove stereo demo disc reached the public by mail. Audio Fidelity's AFLP 1872 came from masters Westrex cut in October 1957, and in mid-December the label advertised in Billboard that it would send a copy to anyone who wrote on company letterhead; Copper Magazine puts the pressing at 500 copies.¹⁶ Stereo itself was older than the groove: Alan Blumlein's stereo patent applications at EMI date to 1931, and Emory Cook issued stereo reel-to-reel tape in 1951 and later two-groove stereo discs that needed two cartridges to play.¹⁶

Per Wikipedia, the first four stereo discs available to the general public were released by Audio Fidelity in March 1958, and the label had four more out by the end of that month.¹⁷

When did vinyl die?#

It never quite did, but it came close. In US dollar terms, per RIAA data compiled by the archivist Richard Hess, the LP and EP peaked at 62.7% of the market in 1977. Cassettes passed them in 1983 (47.8% against 44.6%) and reached 55.3% in 1985. CDs went from 0.5% in 1983 to 95.5% at their peak in 2002. The LP and EP fell to 1.1% in 1990 and stayed below 0.3% from 1992 to 2007.¹⁸

In units, RIAA shipments show total vinyl more than halving between 1984 and 1988. In 1991 the US shipped 22 million vinyl singles and 4.8 million LPs and EPs; by 1995 it was 10.2 million singles and 2.2 million LPs and EPs. LP shipments had a small 1990s high of 3.4 million in 1998, then fell to 900,000 in 2006, the bottom; vinyl singles bottomed at 300,000 in 2009.¹⁹ The other US tracker, SoundScan (now Luminate), which counts sales to consumers rather than shipments, put the low a year earlier, at 857,000 vinyl albums in 2005.¹⁹ Worldwide, IFPI figures reported by SPIN fall from 450 million vinyl albums in 1989 to 3 million in 2006.¹⁹ In the UK, just over 200,000 LPs were bought in 2007, per BPI figures.²⁰

The factories went with the sales. After the CD arrived, major labels sold, scrapped and dismantled pressing machines, the AP reported in 2022.²¹ Around 2015 NPR counted about 16 US plants still running, with the largest operating 28 presses and buying used ones from closed plants as far away as Italy.²²

How did the revival start?#

Part of it was a holiday invented by shop owners. Record Store Day was conceived in September 2007; the idea was presented by Eric Levin of Criminal Records, modeled partly on Free Comic Book Day, with Michael Kurtz and Carrie Colliton among the co-founders. The first one was held in April 2008, launched with Metallica signing at Rasputin Music.²³

The counting is the clearest part of the story. The RIAA's 2025 year-end report describes "19 YEARS of vinyl growth" in the US, which puts the turn right around the 2006 low.²⁴ Demand outran the rebuilt factories: by 2022 the AP counted about 40 US plants, mostly small, backlogs of six to eight months, and only a handful of companies worldwide making presses, "none in the U.S."²¹

Is vinyl outselling CDs?#

In the US, yes, by money since 2020 and by units since 2022. In the UK, by money since 2022, but not by units as of the latest full count. The figures below are official industry numbers unless marked; RIAA counts label shipments and revenue; BPI counts consumer sales from Official Charts Company data.

A few details in that table carry the story. In the US in 2025, total physical revenue was $1,381.0 million, so vinyl was roughly three-quarters of it (75.5% by this guide's arithmetic on the RIAA figures), in a year when total US recorded-music wholesale revenue hit a record $11.5 billion.²⁴ Music Week reported that 2025 was the first year vinyl passed $1 billion since 1983; that milestone is Music Week's framing, not a line in the RIAA document.³⁰ Luminate, counting consumer purchases rather than shipments, put 2025 US vinyl album sales at 47.8 million against 33.8 million CD albums, the most purchased physical format.³¹ In the UK, 2024 was the first year physical album sales rose since 1994,²⁸ and the top vinyl album of 2025 was Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl, at over 147,000 copies.²⁹

The newest numbers add a twist. In the first half of 2026 the RIAA reported US vinyl revenue up 17.7% and CD revenue up 58.6%, with physical overall up 25.9%; the mid-year release gave growth rates but not dollar or unit totals.³²