By Martin H. Rots

The way we listen to music has evolved from Edison's tin cylinders in 1877 to digital media.  Most of us remember the old RCA trademark of the dog listening to the phonograph via the giant horn.  You needed the ears of a dog to get anything meaningful out of that technology.  Still, it was the first step in preserving a live performance for future listening.

The early media was fragile and required careful handling.  You couldn't put it in your pocket and the hardware was hardly portable.  The first machines were hand cranked, but they were soon replaced by more consistent spring drives.  In 1918, wax discs became the predominant media replacing the old tin and celluloid cylinders. 

In the beginning, no one could agree on a standard speed the records should be played at and different manufacturers produced records that required different speeds.  In 1900, there were two predominant companies producing records, Columbia and Victor.  Columbia's records were played at 80 RPM and Victor's were played at 76RPM.  By 1925, a compromise was reached and the two companies settled on 78 RPM, which became the industry standard.

78 RPM record albums were replaced by 45 RPM "singles" and 33 1/3 RPM "LP" vinyl albums introduced by RCA Victor in 1931.  It wasn't until 1957 that stereo LPs were introduced to the consumer market.  For years, you could chose between mono and stereo releases.  The stereo records cost one dollar more than the mono release.  Many artists, including the Beatles, only released their work in mono during the sixties.  True stereo releases often lagged behind the initial mono releases by months, sometimes years.

I remember seeing a 45 RPM record player in a car when I was a kid in the fifties.  I was too young to understand the significance at the time, but it created enough of an impression on me that I still remember seeing it.  The car was parked when I heard Elvis belt out Hound Dog.  I can't imagine trying to keep a needle in the groove while tooling down the street. 

Many years later in 1963, I saw my first four-track tape machine in a yellow Cadillac convertible.  My uncle had a cool friend who was an executive at Liberty Records in Hollywood.   My cousins and I liked him because he knew Jan and Dean, local surf music heroes.  One day at a pool party, he took us out to his car and opened the glove box to reveal a four track tape player.  He popped in Surf City and my female cousins danced in the driveway while I marveled at the new technology. 

Four track tapes gave way to eight track tapes.  Like the four tracks, this tech had the annoying habit of changing tracks right in the middle of the tune.  Hendrix could be wailing when all of a sudden the music would fade, there would be a clicking noise as the playback head was mechanically relocated and the music would fade back in.  Compared to today's media, it was amazing that anyone would bother with this primitive technology.

Cassettes were the next step in the revolution.  They did away with multiple track changes and only required a tape direction change.  The problem with cassettes was that the fidelity sucked.  The small surface area on the tape produced a lot of hiss.  Dolby Noise Reduction was introduced to combat this, but it also eliminated the high frequencies with the hiss.  The result in my humble opinion was pretty lifeless compared to vinyl.  Cassettes recorded at home were usually of better sound quality than commercially produced cassettes that were dubbed at high speed.

In 1982 the CD format was introduced and it replaced vinyl and tape as a master media for the home, car and personal players.  Formats such as DAT (Digital Audio Tape) and DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) were introduced as competing technologies and quickly disappeared as CDs became ubiquitous.  It seemed that the almost indestructible CD had become the prevailing, ultimate media technology.

That was, of course, until the revolution in the storage of digital media took place.  Sony Walkmans gave way to IPods.  The storage capacity of the two devices are incomparable.  The Walkman played a CD, the IPod could be loaded with hundreds of songs and played back through a myriad of devices.

Now it appears that even the venerated IPod is destined for the dustbin as music storage and playback devices (as well as digital cameras and GPS units)  are being replaced by smart phones.  I once had well over a thousand vinyl albums.  They took up a wall of my living room.  Over the years I replaced the vinyl with CDs which physically, took much less room to store.  Now, my entire collection of music (70G+) is contained on a media storage device only slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes.  I still have all my CDs, but I stored them away after copying them to my hard drive.  I imagine that they'll remain boxed up for years before I decide to sell them, just like what happened to the vinyl.

It's sad in a way.  The CDs, like the vinyl records, have many memories.  When I would look through my record collection, certain records would make me nostalgic.  They would bring back memories of treasured birthday and Christmas presents, excited purchases and girls I once knew, long ago.  I don't know if I'll ever feel that fondly towards my IPod.

Time will tell.