PLAYS FORTY MINUTES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 9

PLAYS FORTY MINUTES

OVER A MILE OF MUSIC LATEST EDISON INVENTION After much fumbling, the record was safely put on, the works were successfully wound up, and the members of the family settled back in their chairs to some good, drowsy music. By jove. thought father, this was just the thing for a cold winter’s evening: a warm chair, a warm fire, and a warm record. Blissful silence. Then Br-r-r-r, scratch, (()?£! “Get up, Tommy Now, hurry up, my lad—and change that record. What a nuisance these records finish so quickly!” That has always been the trouble. No sooner is the record put on and the works wound up, than it must be taken off again and the works wound up again. Inventions came which widened the range of music, and improved motors were less likely to collapse after a few weeks’ use. But it has remained for Thomas A. Edison, pioneer of all phonograph invention, to create the record that will not run out. Out of his wonder-working laboratory has come another revolutionising invention, an instrument and a recreation that renders 40 minutes of music on one double-faced disc. Yet these new discs are no wider than the short-play-ing re-creations. The secret lies in the new phonograph, which is so mechanically perfect that its gentle propelling action will guide the diamond point along a groove l-450th part of an inch wide (about half the width of the average human hair), whose length on a single disc is over a mile and a-quarter. These new re-creation records are made in two sizes, 10-inch and 12-inch, the former being known as the 24-minute, and the other as the 40minute. What is more, the playing times given have been found by test to be the absolute minimum, and in most cases the 10-inch discs plav for 13 minutes a side, and the 12-inch up to 22J minutes a side. The amount of music on one side of the ordinary longplaying re-creation, if recorded under the ordinary talking-machine method, would require a disc as large as a circular dining-room table. Consider what an immense advantage this invention will be for the phonograph owner. On one record he may now hear a whole concert, enjoying the while 40 minutes of ease in his warm armchair. No more racing round the room changing discs. One of the latest re-creation records which has just reached New Zealand provides this concert on its two sides: Overture from “William Tell,” sextet from “Lucia,” “La Gioconda,” and Wagner’s march from “Tannhauser,” an interval, followed by the “Poet and Peasant” overture (yon Suppe), “.Hear Me

Norma” (Bellini) and Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” (March of the Hours). One record, playing softly in the drawingroom, will last for nearly the whole dinner-time! In fact, special programmes of dinner music have already been drawn up, consisting of the selections played by the Hotel Commodore Orchestra, New York, in the actual hotel dining-room. This new invention can hardly fail to find a wide and ready public throughout the world. Of course, added to its many advantages, listed above, is that of economy; one record now takes the place of any number from six to 12.