The overwhelming majority of records manufactured have been of certain sizes (7, 10, or 12 inches), playback speeds (33⅓, 45, or 78 RPM), and appearance (round black discs). However, since the commercial adoption of the gramophone record, a wide variety of records have also been produced that do not fall into these categories, and they have served a variety of purposes.

Unusual size

• European shellac records — In the first three decades of the twentieth century European companies including Pathé, Odeon, and Fonotipia made recordings in a variety of sizes, including 21 cm, 25 cm, 27 cm, 29 cm, 35 cm, and 50 cm (roughly 8½", 10", 11¾", 12", 14", and 20").
• 16" and 20" discs — Broadcasting studios made use of 16" and 20" 78rpm acetate "transcriptions"; these were used for time-delay programs and for prerecorded broadcasts. These could provide up to 20 minutes of unbroken program material with very good fidelity (indistinguishable from live to casual, but not to critical listeners). Early classical LP recordings were in fact initially recorded on 20" 78-rpm acetates for later transfer to LP. 16" turntables are still seen in professional broadcast equipment, although it is probably very rare that any disk larger than 12" is ever played on them.

• 8" EPs. Mostly seen as Japanese pressed records in the 1980s and 1990s, and after 1992 in the US (one record plant started producing them after then).
• 7" 78-rpm children's records — The 78 rpm records of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s were breakable shellac (and broken records were a very common accident). In the 1950s, unbreakable records of various plastic compositions were introduced and coexisted with breakable shellac records. Unbreakable records were, of course, favored for children's records. A common format for children's records was the 7" 78-rpm unbreakable record, easily handled by small hands, and during the 1950s, 6" Little Golden Records made of bright yellow plastic were a common sight in children's playrooms in the United States.
• 6", 7", 8", and 9" flexi discs were popular in Japan where they were known as sound-sheets (sono shito) and were often in traditional round format. In other areas, flexi disks were usually square and often included in a magazine. For example, the American magazine National Geographic's January 1979 issue included a flexi disk of whale sounds called "Songs of the Humpback Whale." With a production order of 10,500,000 copies, it became the largest single press run of any record at the time.
• 5", 6", 9", 11", and 13" records. Underground hardcore punk bands in the 1990s started releasing EPs on all sizes of vinyl from 5" to 13" in size. Popular industrial music group Nine Inch Nails has released a limited edition series of 9" discs, to aid in promoting the single March of the Pigs from their full length 1994 album The Downward Spiral. The record featured 2 songs on the first side, and an etching of the album's promotional logo (a coiled centipede) on the second side.
• a 1" record was released by the hardcore band Spazz on Slap A Ham Records. It contains one track on each side : "Hemorrhoidal Dance of Death" (played at 78 RPM) and "Patches Are For Posers" (played at 33 RPM). The edition was limited to 14 copies. Similarly, Japanese grindcore band Slight Slappers released a 2" on the same label, limited to 666 copies.
• Oddly shaped discs were also produced. The grooving was typically 7" but the vinyl was shaped outside the 7" size, for example ABBA released Thank you for the Music with the shape of an ABBA logo. Also, John Linnell of the band They Might Be Giants released a single called "Montana" which was in the shape of the USA. This record was problematic because record players whose tonearms returned automatically after the record finished playing often did just that before the needle actually reached the song. These oddly-shaped records were frequently combined with picture discs (see below); a trend that was pushed particularly hard by UK record company branches in the mid-1980s. Curiously, uncut test pressings of shaped discs in their original 12" form - with the clear vinyl surrounds still intact - are much more sought-after by collectors than the "regular" shapes themselves.

Unusual materials

7" 33⅓ "Flexi disc" records were seen occasionally. One common use was as inserts in books that included audio supplements. LP recordings could be made on very thin, flexible sheets of vinyl (or laminated paper), and this was sometimes done for a mixture of practical utility and novelty appeal. At least one "magazine" was published with a spiral binding, a hole punched through the entire magazine, and four or five of these flexible recordings bound into the magazine. The magazine could be opened to one of these recordings and turned back upon itself; then the entire magazine placed on a turntable and the record could be played. In the early days of personal computers, when programs were commonly stored on audio cassettes, at least one computer magazine published "floppy ROMs," which were bound-in-thin-plastic 33⅓ rpm audio recordings of computer data, to be played on a turntable and dubbed onto an audio cassette.

Paper records were pioneered in the 1930s by Hit of the Week Records and Durium Records. Laminated cardboard records have also been produced as promotional materials, most notably on the backs of cereal boxes in the late 1960s.

Chocolate has even been used to produce promotional recordings that could be eaten once the record had been played, although the lifetime of the records would have been remarkably low - perhaps two to three plays.

Unusual speeds

8 RPM 7-inch- This recording format was developed sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind. One record holds 4 hours of speech. The format was later used to distribute magazines on ten-inch "flexible discs" recorded at 8⅓ RPM. These discs were made of thin plastic and were literally flexible, similar to an overhead transparency sheet. The first magazine to be circulated widely in the flexible disc format to blind individuals was U.S. News & World Report. The National Library Service for the Blind ceased using analog discs as a format for audio book and magazine distribution in 2001.

16 2/3 RPM — This speed was used almost exclusively for spoken word content, in particular for the "talking books" used by the visually impaired. For this reason, the inclusion of a 16 2/3 speed setting on turntables was compulsory in some countries for many years, despite the records themselves being a rarity. Cassette tapes proved to be a far more popular format for such spoken content. Chrysler's short-lived Highway Hi-Fi format also used 16 2/3 7"s.

Prior to 1930 (particularly before 1925), a number of proprietary formats existed, with recordings made at speeds anywhere from 60 to 130 RPM (although most were between 72 and 82 rpm). Even 78 RPM was not initially a worldwide standard, as American records were recorded at 78.26 rpm and European records were recorded at 77.92 rpm.

A small number of 78 RPM microgroove vinyl recordings have been issued by smaller and underground performers, mainly as novelty items, from the 1970s to the present. Recently the Belfast singer Duke Special has released a number of ten inch EPs in 78 RPM.

The Dutch company, Philips introduced a constant linear velocity format prior to the standardised '78' where the RPM changed as the stylus traversed the record (unusually) from the inside to the outside. The actual playing speed was shown as a letter between 'A' and 'D'.

Unusual holes

The larger holes on 7" records (a.k.a. "45"s) was due to RCA's wishing their system to be incompatible with Columbia Records' system when vinyl discs were first introduced Most 7" records in Europe intended for home use had standard-sized holes, as opposed to the USA, where many sold to consumers had the larger holes. Many 7" records had a center with a small hole that could be easily snapped out, yielding a record with a larger hole; this approach was common in the United Kingdom from the 1950s until the early 1980s, but fell out of favor elsewhere. Larger holes have also been used for records designed to be played on jukeboxes, which would mechanically place the record onto a turntable with a conical spindle of matching size at the base (easier for a machine than it would be if standard-sized holes and spindles were used). The larger hole would also lessen the warpage effect known as "dishing", which causes a record to slip when stacked upon another while being played in automatic record changers.

Many blank acetate discs have multiple holes (usually three or four) intended to prevent slippage during cutting. In 1972, as a factory prank, initial copies of a Linda Jones record were manufactured with no center hole.

NON's Pagan Muzak (Gray Beat, 1978) is a one-sided 7" with multiple locked grooves and two center holes, meaning each locked groove can be played at two different trajectories as well as any number of speeds. The original release came with instructions for the listener to drill more holes in the record as they saw appropriate.

Unusual grooving

Locked grooves

Nearly all records have a lock-groove: it is the silent loop at the end of the record that keeps the needle and tonearm from drifting into the label area. However, it is possible to record sound in this groove, and many artists have included looping audio in the locked groove. Probably the first track to utilize this technique was The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), featuring a multi-layered collage of randomized chatter in its run-off loop. The Who responded by putting a mock advertisement for their label, Track Records, in their The Who Sell Out LP. On The Format's album Dog Problems, the feedback at the end of "If Work Permits" continues into the lock-groove, which repeats. Another example of locked groove record is Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut album F#A#∞ (pronounced F-sharp, A-sharp, Infinity). At the end of the song "Bleak, Uncertain, Beautiful..." there is a string phrase recorded on the locked groove. The title's "infinity" refers to this phrase. This concept has been extended to the production of records consisting entirely of circular "locked grooves" to provide collections of infinite loop sound samples of duration limited to one revolution of the disc. Notable examples of this are the releases from RRRecords of the 7" RRR-100 (with 100 locked grooves) and the 12" RRR-500 (with 500 locked grooves). Canada's Legion Of Green Men took the art further creating several records and remixes containing what they called Eternal Opuscules, rhythmic tunes and songs which would play seamlessly to a locked groove at the end of a side. There are also many techno records featuring loops as locked grooves, which, when recorded at 133 1/3 bpm and are replayed at 33 1/3 rpm, will continuously repeat the beats and musical phrases, which can then be utilised creatively by a DJ.

Parallel grooves

It is possible to master recordings with two or more separate, interlaced spiral grooves on a side. Such records have occasionally been made as novelties. Depending on where the needle is dropped in the lead-in area, it will catch more or less randomly in one of the grooves. Each groove can contain a different recording, so that you have a record which "magically" plays one of several different recordings. An example is Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief. Also Tool's 1992 EP release, Opiate featured on the second side a double groove that would either play the first track of side two or the hidden song that was found at the end of the CD version. In 2005 a 7" single titled "The Road leads where it's led" by The Secret Machines was released in UK, that contained both tracks on one side on parallel grooves. The Summer 1980 issue of Mad Magazine Super Special included a one-sided sound sheet (see "flexidisc" above), playable on a standard turntable. It had eight interlaced grooves, each track having the same introduction song but a different ending. Many of The Shins ' 7" records have Parallel grooves. (Such as Phantom Limb (song), which has "Nothing at All" and "Split Needles (Alt. Version)"on the b-side.) The band None of Your Fucking Business released a one-sided 7" called "Escapes from Hell" (side 2 has a groove, but there is no audio encoded in the groove), with 2 grooves that started from the center and ended on the outside of the disc. One groove ran at 45rpm, while the other ran at 33rpm. UK punk rocker, Johnny Moped's debut album Cycledelic has a lead track with a parallel groove listed on the label as "0. Mystery Track", which runs parallel to the track. The 12" single for rapper De La Soul's 1989 song Me Myself and I, on the B-side, it has 2 different tracks in a parallel groove. One groove has two remixes of the "Me Myself and I" song from the A-side, while the other has "Brain Washed Follower".

In 1975 Ronco UK released a parallel groove game called "They're Off", which featured three 12" discs each containing eight possible outcomes on a horse race. It featured Noel Whitcomb, a well-known horse-racing commentator of the day and the game revolved around betting which "horse" would win the race on that occasion. This appears to have been based on a Canadian product called "They're at the Post" by Maas Marketing, which is more or less the same game with different recordings on the discs to reflect the target market.

Inside-to-outside recording

Almost all analog disc recordings were recorded at constant angular speed, resulting in a decreasing linear speed toward the disc center. The result was increased "end-groove distortion" toward the center of the disc, particularly on loud passages. Since classical music tends to start quietly and mount to a loud climax, it was frequently suggested that it would be better if recordings were made to play from the center of the disk outward. A few such recordings were made, but the domination of record changers, and the fact that symphony movements are not uniformly twenty minutes long, made these recordings no more than curiosities. In the late 1920s and early 1930s some movie studios experimented with records as an alternative method for recording film sound. Most of these records "played from the inside out" as this supposedly made it easier to synchronise the sound on the record with the pictures on the film. Nevertheless synchronisation difficulties meant that "sound on film" techniques (using optical or magnetic soundtracks) were more commercially successful despite inferior sound quality.

Until the 1920s, French Pathé Records used inside start and other commercially distinctive grooving. At that time they cut all discs vertically, meaning the vibrations in the grooves were "hill and dale", as their wax cylinders had always been. The records required a special sapphire stylus and a vertically responsive reproducer for playback.

Inventor Thomas Edison, who always favoured the cylinder for all its advantages, also cut his discs with vertically modulated grooves from their introduction in 1912 until a year or two before his company's demise in 1929. Edison pioneered fine groove discs that played for up to five minutes per 10-inch side; they were very thick to remain perfectly flat and played back with a precision-ground diamond stylus. A commercially unsuccessful extension of the system introduced grooves nearly twice as fine as those of microgroove LPs, yielding playing times of up to 20 minutes per side at 80 RPM and again requiring a special diamond stylus. Even more than with Pathé discs, Edison's vertical-cut records called for specially designed equipment for playback.

To play these or other vertical-cut recordings on modern equipment, one must reconnect a stereo pick-up cartridge such that it picks up a "cross-phased" signal, and switch the sound output to mono.

Early stereophonic format

Before the development of the single-groove stereo system circa 1957, at least one company, Cook Laboratories, released a number of "binaural" recordings. These were not created using binaural recording techniques, but rather, each side of one of these recordings consisted of two long, continuous tracks — one containing the left channel, and the other containing the right channel. It was intended that the buyer purchase an adapter from Cook Laboratories that allowed two cartridges to be mounted together, with the proper spacing, on a single tone arm. Only a very small number of recordings were ever released in this format.

Quadrophonic formats

Quadrophonic records present four channels of audio, requiring specialized pickups or decoding equipment to reproduce the two additional channels' signals from the groove.

Vibration-resistant discs

Highway Hi-Fi was a system of proprietary records and players designed for use in automobiles, utilizing a slower play speed and high stylus pressure.

Unusual appearance

Unusual colors, and even multi-colored shellac first appeared in the 1910s on such labels as Vocalion Records

When RCA Victor launched the 7" 45 rpm record, they initially had eight musical classifications (pop, country, blues, classical, children's, etc.) each with not only its own uniquely colored label but with a corresponding color vinyl. According to experts at the Sarnoff Center in Princeton, NJ, the cost of maintaining eight vinyl colors became too high, but the different colored labels were continued, at least for popular music (black) and classical (red, as in "Red Seal"). In October 1945, RCA Victor put on the market its first "non-breakable" phonograph records. Made of a ruby-red, translucent vinyl resin plastic, they cost twice as much ($2 a record) as the 12-inch Victor Red Seal. In the 1960s, a distinction was made in label colors of promotional copies of 45 rpm records as well, with pop music being issued on yellow labels and country on light green.

Red Raven released 78 rpm children's records with an animation printed onto the disc. They included a little mirrored device (an ersatz praxinoscope) to pop onto the turntable's spindle that reflected the animation in such a way that while the record plays one gets to see a little cartoon.

In the 1970s, such gimmicks started to reappear on records, especially on 7" and 12" singles. These included using coloured acetate instead of black vinyl. The whole spectrum was available, from clear transparent (including a witty transparent 12" of Queen's The Invisible Man, though German Group Faust released their debut album with transparent vinyl and cover in 1971), white, red, blue, yellow and even multi-hued. Some recordings were released in several different colors, in an effort to sell the same product to one person multiple times, if they were of the collecting bent. Currently, it is common practice for hardcore punk to release records of different colors at the same time, and press a smaller number of one color than the other. This has created a culture of hardcore record collecting based around having the same release multiple times, each copy with a different and more rare color.

In 1972, the Kingdom of Bhutan released several unusual postage stamps that were playable plastic phonograph records. These miniature 33 1/3 RPM recordings feature either regional music or tourism information. While they are sought-after as novelty postage stamps, they were not practical for postage use because of their size, and cancellation damaged the grooves, rendering them unplayable. Also, the small circumference of many of the stamps made them unplayable on turntables with automatic return tonearms.

The 1977 release of the 45rpm single of "Strawberry Letter 23" by The Brothers Johnson was produced by A&M Records with a slightly pink center label (as opposed to the usual buff color that A&M uses), and had strawberry scent embedded into the plastic to make the record give off the odour of strawberries.

Kraftwerk released a 12" single of "Neon Lights", made of glow-in-the-dark plastic. Penetration released a luminous vinyl limited edition of the album Moving Targets in 1978 and the "Translumadefractadisc" (Han-O-Disc) punk sampler picture disc (which had a silk screened luminous ink under the litho on Mylar film image of Medusa) was released by The Label (U.K) in 1979. The Foo Fighter's debut single 'This Is A Call' was available on 12" glow-in-the-dark vinyl, and Luke Vibert also released a glow-in-the-dark 11" EP in 2000.

The Canadian pressing of DEVO's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO! album featured spattered-color vinyl, with a grey/white marbled base with splashes of color on the top of that. The US pressing came in multiple (solid) colors of vinyl, while the UK pressing was a picture disc and came with a flexi-disc.

The 1980 A&M Records LP of Split Enz's album True Colours was remarkable not only for its multiple cover releases (in different color patterns), but for the laser-etching process used on the vinyl. The logo from the album cover, as well as other shapes, were etched into the vinyl in a manner that, if hit by a light, would reflect in polychromatic colors. This same process was also used for the 45 single of the band's song "One Step Ahead" from the album Waiata.

Also in 1980, the British band Squeeze released a 5-inch 33 1/3 RPM vinyl recording of "If I Didn't Love You", backed with "Another Nail In My Heart" (A&M Records AM-1616 / SP-4802). Due to space restrictions of the grooves, both songs were mixed as monaural.

The Japanese rock band Boris is also known for their unique LPs. Their 2006 album Pink was recorded on pink vinyl. Their other 2006 album, Vein, is recorded on transparent vinyl. It is see through, and has laser-etched artwork on the outer two inches of the record. This causes problems with auto-start phonographs, as the actual grooves of music do not start where the needle is designed to drop. This can cause damage to the needle and record artwork.

The "B side" of Dinosaur Jr's cover of The Cure's "Just like Heaven" has no music on it, instead it has a bas-relief "sculpture" embossed on its surface.

Picture discs

Picture discs debuted in the early 1930s, when various materials were used experimentally as gimmicks or for advertising. These early picture discs were simply a sheet of thin vinyl film which was placed over a thick paper print and then pressed with the grooves and had very poor sound quality.

Adolf Hitler even released a 7" picture disc of this type with one of his speeches. Known as the Patria (Fatherland) picture disc, the obverse bears an image of Hitler giving a speech and has a recording of both a speech by Hitler and also Party Member Hans Hinkel. The reverse bears a hand holding a swastika flag and the Carl Woitschach (1933 — Telefunken A 1431) recording In Dem Kampf um die Heimat - Faschistenmarsch.

Invented in the forties by Tom Saffady, Vogue Records (picture discs) were manufactured in Detroit, Michigan, at Sav-Way Industries during 1946 and 1947 and sold for 50 to 75 cents each. With 74 titles featuring artists like Lulu Belle, The Charlie Shavers Quintet, and Patsy Montana they were 10" in diameter and made of an aluminum platter covered in vinyl.

Following introduction of colored vinyl, picture discs started to appear in the 1970s. The first serious pictures discs (with acceptable but still inferior sound quality) were developed by Metronome Records GmbH (a subsidiary of Polydor Records). These new picture discs were made by creating a five layer lamination consisting of a core of black vinyl with kiln dried paper decals on either side and then outer skins of clear vinyl film (manufactured by 3M) on the outsides. In manufacture, one layer of the clear film was first placed on the bed of the press on top of the stamper, then a "puck" of hot black vinyl from the extruder was placed on top of that. Finally the top print and vinyl film layer was added (held by a retracting pin in the upper profile usually employed to retain the upper paper label) and the press closed. Problems with poor vinyl flow caused by the paper texture and air released from the paper (that had not been removed in the kiln drying process) plagued the process. One of the first rock picture discs was British progressive rock band Curved Air's first album, Air Conditioning.

On some picture discs, the images used were meant to create an optical illusion while the record was rotating on the turntable (as in the B side of Curved Air's Air Conditioning), while others used the visual effect to add to the music — for example, the 1979 picture disc of Fischer-Z's The Worker featured a train which endlessly commuted around the turntable, reinforcing the song's message. Later picture discs included liquid light show style fluids between the vinyl, Rowlux 3D effect film, defraction rainbow film, metal flake, (examples can be found in the lenticular printing section of Wikipedia) pressure sensitive liquid crystals that changed color when the record was picked up, a real holographic record (the first ever), and even a real "live album." Made as a demonstration for Stevie Wonder's "Journey through the Secret Life of Plants", it featured a layer of blotting paper between the clear vinyl layers that contained Alfalfa seeds. A tag of the blotting paper protruded below the record, and resting the disc on a glass of water with the paper in the water allowed the seeds to germinate and grow inside the record. When the prototype was taken through customs in Canada it was seized by the Department of Agriculture, making it not only the only real live album but the only record ever banned by the Department of Agriculture (alfalfa being a prohibited import).

See also

• SelectaVision
• Voyager Golden Record
• List of picture discs
• Lenticular printing

External links

• The Internet museum of records Site devoted entirely to "strange but true recorded anomalies" such as a Chinese frozen-food package lid that was also a playable record
• Articles from Kempa.com on parallel grooves and "vinyl video"
• The 45 Adaptor An short article looking at the history of the 45rpm spindle adaptor.

References