John Minns on the fall and rise of vinyl recordings of popular music
Emile Berliner: German-American inventor (1851-1929 ) Emile Berliner was born into a wealthy family of Jewish merchants from Hanover, Germany. He was expected to join the family business, but his heart was in another place. As a child he was fascinated by mechanical equipment and the new technology that was emerging from the second Industrial Revolution in America. As an adult, he would later be drawn into the production of audio technology to store and reproduce the human voice. His planned inauguration into a restrained, predictable family business would stifle his creativity, so in 1870, at the age of 19, he set sail for America. To keep his head above water after his arrival in the US he took various jobs, including stable boy, shop worker and bottle washer. In the evenings he would attend the local educational institute to study Physics. Emile would later go on to invent a number of items: a soundproofing material, a type of rotary engine (helicopter), the microphone diaphragm (the precursor to the modern microphone) and many others. In 1887 he was granted a patent on the first flatbed Gramophone and the first flat disc record.
These two items would help to pave the way for what would later be known as the music industry, bringing delight to billions of people throughout the world. The Record Disc was initially made from vulcanising rubber that included a mixture of slate dust and shellac (a secretion from the lac beetle). The discs would eventually morph into records being made of Polyvinyl Chloride, inheriting the colloquial name of ‘Vinyl’.
Percy Phillips and The Quarrymen On 12th July 1958, five teenage musicians entered the premises of Phillips Sound and Recording Services, a family-run home business trading from 38 Kensington Road, Liverpool. The shop sold a variety of home and electrical goods, including batteries, radios, record players, and
