Play it again Sam, or Bev, or Elvis, or..
August 10, 2009 (Monday)
One of the modern technological achievements that enhance the quality of many lives these days is recorded music. My children gave me a little device a few years ago that is not much larger than a credit card, and fits easily into a shirt pocket, making it ideal for use when walking, jogging or cycling. It can hold 800 to 1200 songs, I think, depending upon the length of each song. If you want to hear that many songs, it might take 2 ½ days to play them all. Players manufactured more recently can hold at least 8 times as many songs as mine. I’m sure that by the time this blog appears, some hold even more.
Thomas Edison was very proud of his cylinders for recorded sound. They were popular from 1888-1915. My grandmother Fake had some of those cylinders that had belonged to my grandfather. They were in the original boxes. She let me listen to them. A new needle was needed for each cylinder played, to guard against wearing out the record. I recall hearing Caruso and some other famous singers of that era.
The 78 rpm was popular when I was a boy. It played one song on each side of the disk. Later players allowed stacking and automatic playing, so you could listen to several without having to change them manually.
The 45 rpm was very popular. It was durable and small enough to carry. Portable players were popular for the 45’s, and juke boxes took to them eagerly, creating quite a show as they displayed the playing of records.
The 33 1/3 rpm was a welcome invention, giving several songs per side. A stack of those could play for hours.
We don’t have enough space for a discussion of tapes, CD’s and DVD’s, or other media.
The modern flash drive for the computer is hardly as big as the smallest finger on a petite hand. Each of these devices can hold so many songs we can hardly believe it. As the old song says, “The band played on,” and on, and on, and on..