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accommodate the new format. Enclosed in curved plastic, the units earned the name clamshell. No
wonder the LP caught on. In the first year of release, sales of long-playing microgroove recordings
topped $3 million. Columbia s new format was up and running.
Groove Theory
What was so great about these microgrooves anyway?
First, consider the recording process at that time. It all begins with a microphone. The microphone
collects sound vibrations, then converts them into electric currents. Next, the amplifier magnifies
those electrical currents and transfers them to the recording head. There the electric currents are
converted into mechanical movements: the vibrations of a recording stylus. The wiggling stylus cuts a
wavy pattern or groove into a rotating disc. This lacquer or wax plate becomes the template or master
disc.
The grooves cut in the master disc accurately follow the shape of the sound waves, visible under a
microscope. The high-pitched waves are bunched together and low-pitched waves are spread apart.
(As his hearing deteriorated, Edison would issue forth musical evaluations after inspecting his
finished cylinder or disc with a microscope.)
Sound is reproduced when a phonograph needle drags through the grooves. Riding across the
grooves produces vibrations in the needle, duplicating the pitch and amplitude of the original. The
cartridge picks up those vibrations, converting them back into electric signals. The signals are
transferred to an amplifier and then liberated via a loudspeaker. Voilà!
Before Goldmark, the physical means of recreating sound hadn t been fundamentally altered since
the Jazz Age. And the 78 rpm record itself had barely progressed from the format of the 1920s. The
opportunity for invention beckoned. Technology was about to catch up with music.
The Long View
It s a classic American success story: the immigrant made good. Peter Goldmark was born in
Budapest, Hungary, in 1906. Educated in Berlin and Vienna, he earned his doctorate in physics from
the University of Vienna. (His mother, significantly, was an avid musician.) Entering the United
States in 1933, he quickly made his name as an engineer. Initially turned down by RCA, Goldmark
was hired by CBS in 1936. Before he masterminded the LP record, Goldmark conducted pioneering
work in color television, and several years after, he developed one of the first videocassette systems,
Electronic Video Recording (EVR). In the course of his career, Goldmark held over 160 patents.
Yet he never collected royalties on his most profitable invention. The LP patents accrued to the
corporation, not the inventor. Speaking in interviews, Dr. Goldmark never comes across as bitter or
envious. He always corrects the assumption that he must ve struck it rich with the LP, as somebody
surely did. He always claimed to relish the complimentary LPs he received in lieu of a royalty check
from CBS every month. Perhaps he was being sardonic while at the same time acknowledging the
price of corporate support.
Goldmark enjoyed a great run at CBS, thirty-six years. He quickly assumed command of the
research labs and embarked on his quest. Until the end of that term, Goldmark was given a wide berth,
not to mention financial backing, for his experimentation. He had the luxury to pursue dead ends and
learn from mistakes. In 1954, the maverick inventor even installed a custom-designed portable
phonograph in the glove compartment of a spankingnew Ford Thunderbird. Yet the microgroove LP
stands as Goldmark s masterpiece. He referred to it as a piece of pure technology: invention and
development combined.
Peter Goldmark retired from CBS in the late 1960s and set up shop on his own. After years of off-
and-on sparring with CEO William Paley, he became bitterly disappointed by the company s lack of
support for his EVR videocassette. Clearly, CBS Television felt threatened by the nascent format.
Paley ultimately squelched the project. This vote of no confidence convinced the headstrong inventor
once and for all that his boss utterly lacked vision. Goldmark maintained the long view on technology
to the end of his days.
The disc and tape will exist side by side, he predicted in 1973.
Neither one of them seems to be replacing the other one. The disc is convenient for
choosing a certain selection which a lot of people prefer. There are ways you could put a
whole library on laser disk . . . laser beams. The only problem is, it wouldn t be profitable.
People will expect to pay the same for a laser disc that they do for a single piece of music.
Mixing sixties idealism with his pragmatic engineer s outlook, Goldmark presented himself as a
futurist in his post-CBS years. His brave new world was both plugged-in and bucolic. He pitched a
technological utopian community of his design. This New Rural Society, as he billed it, in many
respects foretells the exurban upper-middle-class neighborhood of the twenty-first century. Strangely
enough, Goldmark s dream world closely resembles our nation today: satellite communities united by
communications technology. According to Goldmark s plan, most people would live and work in the
same place, a not-so-far-out response to sixties urban blight, as it turns out.
One communications satellite in orbit over the United States could take in all of the important
sports, cultural and entertainment events of the cities and make them available to every rural center in
the country, declared Goldmark. (At that point, cable TV was only a rumor.) Ninety-nine percent of
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