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In India, the Supreme Court of India was created on January 28, 1950 after adoption of the Constitution. Article 141 of the Constitution of India states that the law declared by Supreme Court is to be binding on all Courts within the territory of India. It is the highest court in India and has ultimate judicial authority to interpret the Constitution and decide questions of national law (including local bylaws). The Supreme Court is also vested with the power of judicial review to ensure the application of the rule of law. |
The Supreme Court is the highest court in Ireland. It has authority to interpret the constitution, and strike down laws and activities of the state that it finds to be unconstitutional. It is also the highest authority in the interpretation of the law. Constitutionally it must have authority to interpret the constitution but its further appellate jurisdiction from lower courts is defined by law. The Irish Supreme Court consists of its presiding member, the Chief Justice, and seven other judges. Judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President in accordance with the binding advice of the Government. The Supreme Court sits in the Four Courts in Dublin. |
Israel's Supreme Court is at the head of the court system in the State of Israel. It is the highest judicial instance. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem. The area of its jurisdiction is the entire State. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme Court itself. The Israeli supreme court is both an appellate court and the high court of justice. As an appellate court, the Supreme Court considers cases on appeal (both criminal and civil) on judgments and other decisions of the District Courts. It also considers appeals on judicial and quasi-judicial decisions of various kinds, such as matters relating to the legality of Knesset elections and disciplinary rulings of the Bar Association. As the High Court of Justice (Hebrew: Beit Mishpat Gavoha Le'Zedek בית משפט גבוה לצדק; also known by its initials as Bagatz בג"ץ), the Supreme Court rules as a court of first instance, primarily in matters regarding the legality of decisions of State authorities: Government decisions, those of local authorities and other bodies and persons performing public functions under the law, and direct challenges to the constitutionality of laws enacted by the Knesset. The court has broad discretionary authority to rule on matters in which it considers it necessary to grant relief in the interests of justice, and which are not within the jurisdiction of another court or tribunal. The High Court of Justice grants relief through orders such as injunction, mandamus and Habeas Corpus, as well as through declaratory judgments. The Supreme Court can also sit at a further hearing on its own judgment. In a matter on which the Supreme Court has ruled - whether as a court of appeals or as the High Court of Justice - with a panel of three or more justices, it may rule at a further hearing with a panel of a larger number of justices. A further hearing may be held if the Supreme Court makes a ruling inconsistent with a previous ruling or if the Court deems that the importance, difficulty or novelty of a ruling of the Court justifies such hearing. The Supreme Court also holds the unique power of being able to order "trial de novo" (a retrial). |
The new Supreme Court of New Zealand was officially established at the beginning of 2004, although it did not come into operation until July. The High Court of New Zealand was until 1980 known as the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has a purely appellate jurisdiction and hears appeals from the Court of Appeal of New Zealand. In some cases, an appeal may be removed directly to the Supreme Court from the High Court. For certain cases, particularly cases which commenced in the District Court, a lower court (typically the High Court or the Court of Appeal) may be the court of final jurisdiction. |
With respect to Pakistan's territories (i.e. FATA, Azad Kashmir, Northern Areas and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT)) the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is rather limited and varies from territory to territory; it can hear appeals only of a constitutional nature from FATA and Northern Areas, while ICT generally functions the same as provinces. Azad Kashmir has its own courts system and the constitution of Pakistan does not apply to it as such; appeals from Azad Kashmir relate to its relationship with Pakistan. |
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the ultimate court for criminal and civil matters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and for civil matters in Scotland. (The supreme court for criminal matters in Scotland is the High Court of Justiciary.) The Supreme Court was established by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 with effect from 1 October 2009, replacing and assuming the judicial functions of the House of Lords. Devolution issues under the Scotland Act 1998, Government of Wales Act and Northern Ireland Act were also transferred to the new Supreme Court by the Constitutional Reform Act, from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. |
The titles of state supreme court vary, which can cause confusion between jurisdictions because one state may use a name for its highest court that another uses for a lower court. In New York, Maryland, and the District of Columbia the highest court is called the Court of Appeals, a name used by many states for their intermediate appellate courts. Further, trial courts of general jurisdiction in New York are called the Supreme Court, and the intermediate appellate court is called the Supreme Court, Appellate Division. In West Virginia, the highest court of the state is the Supreme Court of Appeals. In Maine and Massachusetts the highest court is styled the "Supreme Judicial Court"; the last is the oldest appellate court of continuous operation in the Western Hemisphere. |
In Austria, the Austrian Constitution of 1920 (based on a draft by Hans Kelsen) introduced judicial review of legislative acts for their constitutionality. This function is performed by the Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof), which is also charged with the review of administrative acts on whether they violate constitutionally guaranteed rights. Other than that, administrative acts are reviewed by the Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof). The Supreme Court (Oberste Gerichtshof (OGH)), stands at the top of Austria's system of "ordinary courts" (ordentliche Gerichte) as the final instance in issues of private law and criminal law. |
In Brazil, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (Supremo Tribunal Federal) is the highest court. It is both the constitutional court and the court of last resort in Brazilian law. It only reviews cases that may be unconstitutional or final habeas corpus pleads for criminal cases. It also judges, in original jurisdiction, cases involving members of congress, senators, ministers of state, members of the high courts and the President and Vice-President of the Republic. The Superior Court of Justice (Tribunal Superior de Justiça) reviews State and Federal Circuit courts decisions for civil law and criminal law cases, when dealing with federal law or conflicting rulings. The Superior Labour Tribunal (Tribunal Superior do Trabalho) reviews cases involving labour law. The Superior Electoral Tribunal (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) is the court of last resort of electoral law, and also oversees general elections. The Superior Military Tribunal (Tribunal Superior Militar) is the highest court in matters of federal military law. |
Final interpretation of and amendments to the German Constitution, the Grundgesetz, is the task of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court), which is the de facto highest German court, as it can declare both federal and state legislation ineffective, and has the power to overrule decisions of all other federal courts, despite not being a regular court of appeals on itself in the German court system. It is also the only court possessing the power and authority to outlaw political parties, if it is deemed that these parties have repeatedly violated articles of the Constitution. |
When it comes to civil and criminal cases, the Bundesgerichtshof is at the top of the hierarchy of courts. The other branches of the German judicial system each have their own appellate systems, each topped by a high court; these are the Bundessozialgericht for matters of social security, the Bundesarbeitsgericht for employment and labour, the Bundesfinanzhof for taxation and financial issues, and the Bundesverwaltungsgericht for administrative law. The so-called Gemeinsamer Senat der Obersten Gerichtshöfe (Joint Senate of the Supreme Courts) is not a supreme court in itself, but an ad-hoc body that is convened in only when one supreme court intends to diverge from another supreme court's legal opinion or when a certain case exceeds the authority of one court. As the courts have well-defined areas of responsibility, situations like these are rather rare and so, the Joint Senate gathers very infrequently, and only to consider matters which are mostly definitory. |
In the Netherlands, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands is the highest. Its decisions, known as "arresten", are absolutely final. The court is banned from testing legislation against the constitution, pursuant to the principle of the sovereignty of the States-General; the court can, however, test legislation against some treaties. Also, the ordinary courts in the Netherlands, including the Hoge Raad, do not deal with administrative law, which is dealt with in separate administrative courts, the highest of which is the Council of State (Raad van State) |
While the Philippines is generally considered a civil law nation, its Supreme Court is heavily modelled after the American Supreme Court. This can be attributed to the fact that the Philippines was colonized by both Spain and the United States, and the system of laws of both nations strongly influenced the development of Philippine laws and jurisprudence. Even as the body of Philippine laws remain mostly codified, the Philippine Civil Code expressly recognizes that decisions of the Supreme Court "form part of the law of the land", belonging to the same class as statutes. The 1987 Philippine Constitution also explicitly grants to the Supreme Court the power of judicial review over laws and executive actions. The Supreme Court is composed of 1 Chief Justice and 14 Associate Justices. The court sits either en banc or in divisions, depending on the nature of the case to be decided. |
Spanish Supreme Court is the highest court for all cases in Spain (both private and public). Only those cases related to human rights can be appealed at the Constitutional Court (which also decides about acts accordance with Spanish Constitution). In Spain, high courts cannot create binding precedents; however, lower rank courts usually observe Supreme Court interpretations. In most private law cases, two Supreme Court judgements supporting a claim are needed to appeal at the Supreme Court. Five sections form the Spanish Supreme court: |
In Sweden, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court respectively function as the highest courts of the land. The Supreme Administrative Court considers cases concerning disputes between individuals and administrative organs, as well as disputes among administrative organs, while the Supreme Court considers all other cases. The judges are appointed by the Government. In most cases, the Supreme Courts will only grant leave to appeal a case (prövningstillstånd) if the case involves setting a precedent in the interpretation of the law. Exceptions are issues where the Supreme Court is the court of first instance. Such cases include an application for a retrial of a criminal case in the light of new evidence, and prosecutions made against an incumbent minister of the Government for severe neglect of duty. If a lower court has to try a case which involves a question where there is no settled interpretation of the law, it can also refer the question to the relevant Supreme Court for an answer. |
In Sri Lanka, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka was created in 1972 after the adoption of a new Constitution. The Supreme Court is the highest and final superior court of record and is empowered to exercise its powers, subject to the provisions of the Constitution. The court rulings take precedence over all lower Courts. The Sri Lanka judicial system is complex blend of both common-law and civil-law. In some cases such as capital punishment, the decision may be passed on to the President of the Republic for clemency petitions. However, when there is 2/3 majority in the parliament in favour of president (as with present), the supreme court and its judges' powers become nullified as they could be fired from their positions according to the Constitution, if the president wants. Therefore, in such situations, Civil law empowerment vanishes. |
In South Africa, a "two apex" system existed from 1994 to 2013. The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) was created in 1994 and replaced the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa as the highest court of appeal in non-constitutional matters. The SCA is subordinate to the Constitutional Court, which is the highest court in matters involving the interpretation and application of the Constitution. But in August 2013 the Constitution was amended to make the Constitutional Court the country's single apex court, superior to the SCA in all matters, both constitutional and non-constitutional. |
In most nations with constitutions modelled after the Soviet Union, the legislature was given the power of being the court of last resort. In the People's Republic of China, the final power to interpret the law is vested in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC). This power includes the power to interpret the basic laws of Hong Kong and Macau, the constitutional documents of the two special administrative regions which are common law and Portuguese-based legal system jurisdictions respectively. This power is a legislative power and not a judicial one in that an interpretation by the NPCSC does not affect cases which have already been decided. |
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants in either manuscripts or printed books. Ancient scribes made alterations when copying manuscripts by hand. Given a manuscript copy, several or many copies, but not the original document, the textual critic might seek to reconstruct the original text (the archetype or autograph) as closely as possible. The same processes can be used to attempt to reconstruct intermediate versions, or recensions, of a document's transcription history. The ultimate objective of the textual critic's work is the production of a "critical edition" containing a scholarly curated text. |
Many ancient works, such as the Bible and the Greek tragedies,[citation needed] survive in hundreds of copies, and the relationship of each copy to the original may be unclear. Textual scholars have debated for centuries which sources are most closely derived from the original, hence which readings in those sources are correct.[citation needed] Although biblical books that are letters, like Greek plays, presumably had one original, the question of whether some biblical books, like the Gospels, ever had just one original has been discussed. Interest in applying textual criticism to the Qur'an has also developed after the discovery of the Sana'a manuscripts in 1972, which possibly date back to the 7–8th centuries. |
In the English language, the works of Shakespeare have been a particularly fertile ground for textual criticism—both because the texts, as transmitted, contain a considerable amount of variation, and because the effort and expense of producing superior editions of his works have always been widely viewed as worthwhile. The principles of textual criticism, although originally developed and refined for works of antiquity, the Bible, and Shakespeare, have been applied to many works, extending backwards from the present to the earliest known written documents, in Mesopotamia and Egypt—a period of about five millennia. However, the application of textual criticism to non-religious works does not antedate the invention of printing. While Christianity has been relatively receptive to textual criticism, application of it to the Jewish (Masoretic) Torah and the Qur'an is, to the devout, taboo.[citation needed] |
Maas comments further that "A dictation revised by the author must be regarded as equivalent to an autograph manuscript". The lack of autograph manuscripts applies to many cultures other than Greek and Roman. In such a situation, a key objective becomes the identification of the first exemplar before any split in the tradition. That exemplar is known as the archetype. "If we succeed in establishing the text of [the archetype], the constitutio (reconstruction of the original) is considerably advanced. |
The textual critic's ultimate objective is the production of a "critical edition".[citation needed] This contains the text that the author has determined most closely approximates the original, and is accompanied by an apparatus criticus or critical apparatus. The critical apparatus presents the author's work in three parts: first, a list or description of the evidence that the editor used (names of manuscripts, or abbreviations called sigla); second, the editor's analysis of that evidence (sometimes a simple likelihood rating),[citation needed]; and third, a record of rejected variants of the text (often in order of preference).[citation needed] |
Before mechanical printing, literature was copied by hand, and many variations were introduced by copyists. The age of printing made the scribal profession effectively redundant. Printed editions, while less susceptible to the proliferation of variations likely to arise during manual transmission, are nonetheless not immune to introducing variations from an author's autograph. Instead of a scribe miscopying his source, a compositor or a printing shop may read or typeset a work in a way that differs from the autograph. Since each scribe or printer commits different errors, reconstruction of the lost original is often aided by a selection of readings taken from many sources. An edited text that draws from multiple sources is said to be eclectic. In contrast to this approach, some textual critics prefer to identify the single best surviving text, and not to combine readings from multiple sources. |
When comparing different documents, or "witnesses", of a single, original text, the observed differences are called variant readings, or simply variants or readings. It is not always apparent which single variant represents the author's original work. The process of textual criticism seeks to explain how each variant may have entered the text, either by accident (duplication or omission) or intention (harmonization or censorship), as scribes or supervisors transmitted the original author's text by copying it. The textual critic's task, therefore, is to sort through the variants, eliminating those most likely to be un-original, hence establishing a "critical text", or critical edition, that is intended to best approximate the original. At the same time, the critical text should document variant readings, so the relation of extant witnesses to the reconstructed original is apparent to a reader of the critical edition. In establishing the critical text, the textual critic considers both "external" evidence (the age, provenance, and affiliation of each witness) and "internal" or "physical" considerations (what the author and scribes, or printers, were likely to have done). |
The collation of all known variants of a text is referred to as a variorum, namely a work of textual criticism whereby all variations and emendations are set side by side so that a reader can track how textual decisions have been made in the preparation of a text for publication. The Bible and the works of William Shakespeare have often been the subjects of variorum editions, although the same techniques have been applied with less frequency to many other works, such as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and the prose writings of Edward Fitzgerald. |
Eclectic readings also normally give an impression of the number of witnesses to each available reading. Although a reading supported by the majority of witnesses is frequently preferred, this does not follow automatically. For example, a second edition of a Shakespeare play may include an addition alluding to an event known to have happened between the two editions. Although nearly all subsequent manuscripts may have included the addition, textual critics may reconstruct the original without the addition. |
External evidence is evidence of each physical witness, its date, source, and relationship to other known witnesses. Critics will often prefer the readings supported by the oldest witnesses. Since errors tend to accumulate, older manuscripts should have fewer errors. Readings supported by a majority of witnesses are also usually preferred, since these are less likely to reflect accidents or individual biases. For the same reasons, the most geographically diverse witnesses are preferred. Some manuscripts show evidence that particular care was taken in their composition, for example, by including alternative readings in their margins, demonstrating that more than one prior copy (exemplar) was consulted in producing the current one. Other factors being equal, these are the best witnesses. The role of the textual critic is necessary when these basic criteria are in conflict. For instance, there will typically be fewer early copies, and a larger number of later copies. The textual critic will attempt to balance these criteria, to determine the original text. |
Two common considerations have the Latin names lectio brevior (shorter reading) and lectio difficilior (more difficult reading). The first is the general observation that scribes tended to add words, for clarification or out of habit, more often than they removed them. The second, lectio difficilior potior (the harder reading is stronger), recognizes the tendency for harmonization—resolving apparent inconsistencies in the text. Applying this principle leads to taking the more difficult (unharmonized) reading as being more likely to be the original. Such cases also include scribes simplifying and smoothing texts they did not fully understand. |
Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901) and Fenton J. A. Hort (1828–1892) published an edition of the New Testament in Greek in 1881. They proposed nine critical rules, including a version of Bengel's rule, "The reading is less likely to be original that shows a disposition to smooth away difficulties." They also argued that "Readings are approved or rejected by reason of the quality, and not the number, of their supporting witnesses", and that "The reading is to be preferred that most fitly explains the existence of the others." |
Since the canons of criticism are highly susceptible to interpretation, and at times even contradict each other, they may be employed to justify a result that fits the textual critic's aesthetic or theological agenda. Starting in the 19th century, scholars sought more rigorous methods to guide editorial judgment. Best-text editing (a complete rejection of eclecticism) became one extreme. Stemmatics and copy-text editing – while both eclectic, in that they permit the editor to select readings from multiple sources – sought to reduce subjectivity by establishing one or a few witnesses presumably as being favored by "objective" criteria.[citation needed] The citing of sources used, and alternate readings, and the use of original text and images helps readers and other critics determine to an extent the depth of research of the critic, and to independently verify their work. |
Stemmatics, stemmology or stemmatology is a rigorous approach to textual criticism. Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) greatly contributed to making this method famous, even though he did not invent it. The method takes its name from the word stemma. The Ancient Greek word στέμματα and its loanword in classical Latin stemmata may refer to "family trees". This specific meaning shows the relationships of the surviving witnesses (the first known example of such a stemma, albeit with the name, dates from 1827). The family tree is also referred to as a cladogram. The method works from the principle that "community of error implies community of origin." That is, if two witnesses have a number of errors in common, it may be presumed that they were derived from a common intermediate source, called a hyparchetype. Relations between the lost intermediates are determined by the same process, placing all extant manuscripts in a family tree or stemma codicum descended from a single archetype. The process of constructing the stemma is called recension, or the Latin recensio. |
The process of selectio resembles eclectic textual criticism, but applied to a restricted set of hypothetical hyparchetypes. The steps of examinatio and emendatio resemble copy-text editing. In fact, the other techniques can be seen as special cases of stemmatics in which a rigorous family history of the text cannot be determined but only approximated. If it seems that one manuscript is by far the best text, then copy text editing is appropriate, and if it seems that a group of manuscripts are good, then eclecticism on that group would be proper. |
The critic Joseph Bédier (1864–1938) launched a particularly withering attack on stemmatics in 1928. He surveyed editions of medieval French texts that were produced with the stemmatic method, and found that textual critics tended overwhelmingly to produce trees divided into just two branches. He concluded that this outcome was unlikely to have occurred by chance, and that therefore, the method was tending to produce bipartite stemmas regardless of the actual history of the witnesses. He suspected that editors tended to favor trees with two branches, as this would maximize the opportunities for editorial judgment (as there would be no third branch to "break the tie" whenever the witnesses disagreed). He also noted that, for many works, more than one reasonable stemma could be postulated, suggesting that the method was not as rigorous or as scientific as its proponents had claimed. |
The stemmatic method's final step is emendatio, also sometimes referred to as "conjectural emendation." But in fact, the critic employs conjecture at every step of the process. Some of the method's rules that are designed to reduce the exercise of editorial judgment do not necessarily produce the correct result. For example, where there are more than two witnesses at the same level of the tree, normally the critic will select the dominant reading. However, it may be no more than fortuitous that more witnesses have survived that present a particular reading. A plausible reading that occurs less often may, nevertheless, be the correct one. |
The bibliographer Ronald B. McKerrow introduced the term copy-text in his 1904 edition of the works of Thomas Nashe, defining it as "the text used in each particular case as the basis of mine." McKerrow was aware of the limitations of the stemmatic method, and believed it was more prudent to choose one particular text that was thought to be particularly reliable, and then to emend it only where the text was obviously corrupt. The French critic Joseph Bédier likewise became disenchanted with the stemmatic method, and concluded that the editor should choose the best available text, and emend it as little as possible. |
By 1939, in his Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare, McKerrow had changed his mind about this approach, as he feared that a later edition – even if it contained authorial corrections – would "deviate more widely than the earliest print from the author's original manuscript." He therefore concluded that the correct procedure would be "produced by using the earliest "good" print as copy-text and inserting into it, from the first edition which contains them, such corrections as appear to us to be derived from the author." But, fearing the arbitrary exercise of editorial judgment, McKerrow stated that, having concluded that a later edition had substantive revisions attributable to the author, "we must accept all the alterations of that edition, saving any which seem obvious blunders or misprints." |
Although Greg argued that an editor should be free to use his judgment to choose between competing substantive readings, he suggested that an editor should defer to the copy-text when "the claims of two readings ... appear to be exactly balanced. ... In such a case, while there can be no logical reason for giving preference to the copy-text, in practice, if there is no reason for altering its reading, the obvious thing seems to be to let it stand." The "exactly balanced" variants are said to be indifferent. |
Whereas Greg had limited his illustrative examples to English Renaissance drama, where his expertise lay, Bowers argued that the rationale was "the most workable editorial principle yet contrived to produce a critical text that is authoritative in the maximum of its details whether the author be Shakespeare, Dryden, Fielding, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Stephen Crane. The principle is sound without regard for the literary period." For works where an author's manuscript survived – a case Greg had not considered – Bowers concluded that the manuscript should generally serve as copy-text. Citing the example of Nathaniel Hawthorne, he noted: |
McKerrow had articulated textual criticism's goal in terms of "our ideal of an author's fair copy of his work in its final state". Bowers asserted that editions founded on Greg's method would "represent the nearest approximation in every respect of the author's final intentions." Bowers stated similarly that the editor's task is to "approximate as nearly as possible an inferential authorial fair copy." Tanselle notes that, "Textual criticism ... has generally been undertaken with a view to reconstructing, as accurately as possible, the text finally intended by the author". |
Bowers and Tanselle argue for rejecting textual variants that an author inserted at the suggestion of others. Bowers said that his edition of Stephen Crane's first novel, Maggie, presented "the author's final and uninfluenced artistic intentions." In his writings, Tanselle refers to "unconstrained authorial intention" or "an author's uninfluenced intentions." This marks a departure from Greg, who had merely suggested that the editor inquire whether a later reading "is one that the author can reasonably be supposed to have substituted for the former", not implying any further inquiry as to why the author had made the change. |
Bowers confronted a similar problem in his edition of Maggie. Crane originally printed the novel privately in 1893. To secure commercial publication in 1896, Crane agreed to remove profanity, but he also made stylistic revisions. Bowers's approach was to preserve the stylistic and literary changes of 1896, but to revert to the 1893 readings where he believed that Crane was fulfilling the publisher's intention rather than his own. There were, however, intermediate cases that could reasonably have been attributed to either intention, and some of Bowers's choices came under fire – both as to his judgment, and as to the wisdom of conflating readings from the two different versions of Maggie. |
Some critics believe that a clear-text edition gives the edited text too great a prominence, relegating textual variants to appendices that are difficult to use, and suggesting a greater sense of certainty about the established text than it deserves. As Shillingsburg notes, "English scholarly editions have tended to use notes at the foot of the text page, indicating, tacitly, a greater modesty about the "established" text and drawing attention more forcibly to at least some of the alternative forms of the text". |
Cladistics is a technique borrowed from biology, where it was originally named phylogenetic systematics by Willi Hennig. In biology, the technique is used to determine the evolutionary relationships between different species. In its application in textual criticism, the text of a number of different manuscripts is entered into a computer, which records all the differences between them. The manuscripts are then grouped according to their shared characteristics. The difference between cladistics and more traditional forms of statistical analysis is that, rather than simply arranging the manuscripts into rough groupings according to their overall similarity, cladistics assumes that they are part of a branching family tree and uses that assumption to derive relationships between them. This makes it more like an automated approach to stemmatics. However, where there is a difference, the computer does not attempt to decide which reading is closer to the original text, and so does not indicate which branch of the tree is the "root"—which manuscript tradition is closest to the original. Other types of evidence must be used for that purpose. |
Although some earlier unpublished studies had been prepared, not until the early 1970s was true textual criticism applied to the Book of Mormon. At that time BYU Professor Ellis Rasmussen and his associates were asked by the LDS Church to begin preparation for a new edition of the Holy Scriptures. One aspect of that effort entailed digitizing the text and preparing appropriate footnotes, another aspect required establishing the most dependable text. To that latter end, Stanley R. Larson (a Rasmussen graduate student) set about applying modern text critical standards to the manuscripts and early editions of the Book of Mormon as his thesis project – which he completed in 1974. To that end, Larson carefully examined the Original Manuscript (the one dictated by Joseph Smith to his scribes) and the Printer’s Manuscript (the copy Oliver Cowdery prepared for the Printer in 1829–1830), and compared them with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions of the Book of Mormon to determine what sort of changes had occurred over time and to make judgments as to which readings were the most original. Larson proceeded to publish a useful set of well-argued articles on the phenomena which he had discovered. Many of his observations were included as improvements in the 1981 LDS edition of the Book of Mormon. |
By 1979, with the establishment of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) as a California non-profit research institution, an effort led by Robert F. Smith began to take full account of Larson’s work and to publish a Critical Text of the Book of Mormon. Thus was born the FARMS Critical Text Project which published the first volume of the 3-volume Book of Mormon Critical Text in 1984. The third volume of that first edition was published in 1987, but was already being superseded by a second, revised edition of the entire work, greatly aided through the advice and assistance of then Yale doctoral candidate Grant Hardy, Dr. Gordon C. Thomasson, Professor John W. Welch (the head of FARMS), Professor Royal Skousen, and others too numerous to mention here. However, these were merely preliminary steps to a far more exacting and all-encompassing project. |
In 1988, with that preliminary phase of the project completed, Professor Skousen took over as editor and head of the FARMS Critical Text of the Book of Mormon Project and proceeded to gather still scattered fragments of the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon and to have advanced photographic techniques applied to obtain fine readings from otherwise unreadable pages and fragments. He also closely examined the Printer’s Manuscript (owned by the Community of Christ—RLDS Church in Independence, Missouri) for differences in types of ink or pencil, in order to determine when and by whom they were made. He also collated the various editions of the Book of Mormon down to the present to see what sorts of changes have been made through time. |
Shemaryahu Talmon, who summarized the amount of consensus and genetic relation to the Urtext of the Hebrew Bible, concluded that major divergences which intrinsically affect the sense are extremely rare. As far as the Hebrew Bible referenced by Old Testament is concerned, almost all of the textual variants are fairly insignificant and hardly affect any doctrine. Professor Douglas Stuart states: "It is fair to say that the verses, chapters, and books of the Bible would read largely the same, and would leave the same impression with the reader, even if one adopted virtually every possible alternative reading to those now serving as the basis for current English translations." |
While textual criticism developed into a discipline of thorough analysis of the Bible — both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament — scholars also use it to determine the original content of classic texts, such as Plato's Republic. There are far fewer witnesses to classical texts than to the Bible, so scholars can use stemmatics and, in some cases, copy text editing. However, unlike the New Testament where the earliest witnesses are within 200 years of the original, the earliest existing manuscripts of most classical texts were written about a millennium after their composition. All things being equal, textual scholars expect that a larger time gap between an original and a manuscript means more changes in the text. |
Scientific and critical editions can be protected by copyright as works of authorship if enough creativity/originality is provided. The mere addition of a word, or substitution of a term with another one believed to be more correct, usually does not achieve such level of originality/creativity. All the notes accounting for the analysis and why and how such changes have been made represent a different work autonomously copyrightable if the other requirements are satisfied. In the European Union critical and scientific editions may be protected also by the relevant neighboring right that protects critical and scientific publications of public domain works as made possible by art. 5 of the Copyright Term Directive. Not all EU member States have transposed art. 5 into national law. |
A gramophone record (phonograph record in American English) or vinyl record, commonly known as a "record", is an analogue sound storage medium in the form of a flat polyvinyl chloride (previously shellac) disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. Phonograph records are generally described by their diameter in inches (12", 10", 7"), the rotational speed in rpm at which they are played (16 2⁄3, 33 1⁄3, 45, 78), and their time capacity resulting from a combination of those parameters (LP – long playing 33 1⁄3 rpm, SP – 78 rpm single, EP – 12-inch single or extended play, 33 or 45 rpm); their reproductive quality or level of fidelity (high-fidelity, orthophonic, full-range, etc.), and the number of audio channels provided (mono, stereo, quad, etc.). |
The phonograph disc record was the primary medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century, replacing the phonograph cylinder record–with which it had co-existed from the late 1880s through to the 1920s–by the late 1920s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed. By the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. From the 1990s to the 2010s, records continued to be manufactured and sold on a much smaller scale, and were especially used by disc jockeys (DJ)s, released by artists in some genres, and listened to by a niche market of audiophiles. The phonograph record has made a niche resurgence in the early 21st century – 9.2 million records were sold in the U.S. in 2014, a 260% increase since 2009. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014. |
The phonautograph, patented by Léon Scott in 1857, used a vibrating diaphragm and stylus to graphically record sound waves as tracings on sheets of paper, purely for visual analysis and without any intent of playing them back. In the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008. Along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. |
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no documentary evidence that Edison's phonograph was based on Scott's phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a wax-impregnated paper tape, with the idea of creating a "telephone repeater" analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. Although the visible results made him confident that sound could be physically recorded and reproduced, his notes do not indicate that he actually reproduced sound before his first experiment in which he used tinfoil as a recording medium several months later. The tinfoil was wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately. The Scientific American article that introduced the tinfoil phonograph to the public mentioned Marey, Rosapelly and Barlow as well as Scott as creators of devices for recording but, importantly, not reproducing sound. Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. Numerous applications for the phonograph were envisioned, but although it enjoyed a brief vogue as a startling novelty at public demonstrations, the tinfoil phonograph proved too crude to be put to any practical use. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a hollow wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device. The wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. |
Lateral-cut disc records were developed in the United States by Emile Berliner, who named his system the "gramophone", distinguishing it from Edison's wax cylinder "phonograph" and Columbia's wax cylinder "graphophone". Berliner's earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter, and were played with a small hand-propelled machine. Both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality. In the United States in 1894, under the Berliner Gramophone trademark, Berliner started marketing records with somewhat more substantial entertainment value, along with somewhat more substantial gramophones to play them. Berliner's records had poor sound quality compared to wax cylinders, but his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved the sound quality. Abandoning Berliner's "Gramophone" trademark for legal reasons, in 1901 Johnson's and Berliner's separate companies reorganized to form the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose products would come to dominate the market for many years. Emile Berliner moved his company to Montreal in 1900. The factory which became RCA Victor stills exists. There is a dedicated museum in Montreal for Berliner. |
In 1901, 10-inch disc records were introduced, followed in 1903 by 12-inch records. These could play for more than three and four minutes respectively, while contemporary cylinders could only play for about two minutes. In an attempt to head off the disc advantage, Edison introduced the Amberol cylinder in 1909, with a maximum playing time of 4½ minutes (at 160 rpm), which in turn were superseded by Blue Amberol Records, which had a playing surface made of celluloid, a plastic, which was far less fragile. Despite these improvements, during the 1910s discs decisively won this early format war, although Edison continued to produce new Blue Amberol cylinders for an ever-dwindling customer base until late in 1929. By 1919 the basic patents for the manufacture of lateral-cut disc records had expired, opening the field for countless companies to produce them. Analog disc records would dominate the home entertainment market until they were outsold by the digital compact disc in the late 1980s (which was in turn supplanted by digital audio recordings distributed via online music stores and Internet file sharing). |
Early recordings were made entirely acoustically, the sound being collected by a horn and piped to a diaphragm, which vibrated the cutting stylus. Sensitivity and frequency range were poor, and frequency response was very irregular, giving acoustic recordings an instantly recognizable tonal quality. A singer practically had to put his or her face in the recording horn. Lower-pitched orchestral instruments such as cellos and double basses were often doubled (or replaced) by louder wind instruments, such as tubas. Standard violins in orchestral ensembles were commonly replaced by Stroh violins, which became popular with recording studios. |
Contrary to popular belief, if placed properly and prepared-for, drums could be effectively used and heard on even the earliest jazz and military band recordings. The loudest instruments such as the drums and trumpets were positioned the farthest away from the collecting horn. Lillian Hardin Armstrong, a member of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, which recorded at Gennett Records in 1923, remembered that at first Oliver and his young second trumpet, Louis Armstrong, stood next to each other and Oliver's horn could not be heard. "They put Louis about fifteen feet over in the corner, looking all sad." For fading instrumental parts in and out while recording, some performers were placed on a moveable platform, which could draw the performer(s) nearer or further away as required.[citation needed] |
During the first half of the 1920s, engineers at Western Electric, as well as independent inventors such as Orlando Marsh, developed technology for capturing sound with a microphone, amplifying it with vacuum tubes, then using the amplified signal to drive an electromagnetic recording head. Western Electric's innovations resulted in a greatly expanded and more even frequency response, creating a dramatically fuller, clearer and more natural-sounding recording. Distant or less strong sounds that were impossible to record by the old methods could now be captured. Volume was now limited only by the groove spacing on the record and the limitations of the intended playback device. Victor and Columbia licensed the new electrical system from Western Electric and began issuing electrically recorded discs in 1925. The first classical recording was of Chopin impromptus and Schubert's Litanei by Alfred Cortot for Victor. |
Electrical recording preceded electrical home reproduction because of the initial high cost of the new system. In 1925, the Victor company introduced the Victor Orthophonic Victrola, an acoustical record player that was specifically designed to play electrically recorded discs, as part of a line that also included electrically reproducing Electrolas. The acoustical Orthophonics ranged in price from US$95 to US$300, depending on cabinetry; by comparison, the cheapest Electrola cost US$650, the price of a new Ford automobile in an era when clerical jobs paid about $20 a week. |
The earliest disc records (1889–1894) were made of various materials including hard rubber. Around 1895, a shellac-based compound was introduced and became standard. Exact formulas for this compound varied by manufacturer and over the course of time, but it was typically composed of about one-third shellac and about two-thirds mineral filler, which meant finely pulverized rock, usually slate and limestone, with an admixture of cotton fibers to add tensile strength, carbon black for color (without this, it tended to be a "dirty" gray or brown color that most record companies considered unattractive), and a very small amount of a lubricant to facilitate mold release during manufacture. Some makers, notably Columbia Records, used a laminated construction with a core disc of coarser material or fiber. The production of shellac records continued until the end of the 78 rpm format (i.e., the late 1950s in most developed countries, but well into the 1960s in some other places), but increasingly less abrasive formulations were used during its declining years and very late examples in truly like-new condition can have as low noise levels as vinyl. |
Flexible or so-called "unbreakable" records made of unusual materials were introduced by a number of manufacturers at various times during the 78 rpm era. In the UK, Nicole records, made of celluloid or a similar substance coated onto a cardboard core disc, were produced for a few years beginning in 1904, but they suffered from an exceptionally high level of surface noise. In the United States, Columbia Records introduced flexible, fiber-cored "Marconi Velvet Tone Record" pressings in 1907, but the advantages and longevity of their relatively noiseless surfaces depended on the scrupulous use of special gold-plated Marconi Needles and the product was not a success. Thin, flexible plastic records such as the German Phonycord and the British Filmophone and Goodson records appeared around 1930 but also did not last long. The contemporary French Pathé Cellodiscs, made of a very thin black plastic, which uncannily resembles the vinyl "sound sheet" magazine inserts of the 1965–1985 era, were similarly short-lived. In the US, Hit of the Week records, made of a patented translucent plastic called Durium coated on a heavy brown paper base, were introduced in early 1930. A new issue came out every week and they were sold at newsstands like a weekly magazine. Although inexpensive and commercially successful at first, they soon fell victim to the Great Depression and production in the US ended in 1932. Related Durium records continued to be made somewhat later in the UK and elsewhere, and as remarkably late as 1950 in Italy, where the name "Durium" survived far into the LP era as a trademark on ordinary vinyl records. Despite all these attempts at innovation, shellac compounds continued to be used for the overwhelming majority of commercial 78 rpm records during the lifetime of the format. |
In 1931, RCA Victor introduced their vinyl-based Victrolac compound as a material for some unusual-format and special-purpose records. By the end of the 1930s vinyl's advantages of light weight, relative unbreakability and low surface noise had made it the material of choice for prerecorded radio programming and other critical applications. When it came to ordinary 78 rpm records, however, the much higher cost of the raw material, as well as its vulnerability to the heavy pickups and crudely mass-produced steel needles still commonly used in home record players, made its general substitution for shellac impractical at that time. During the Second World War, the United States Armed Forces produced thousands of 12-inch vinyl 78 rpm V-Discs for use by the troops overseas. After the war, the wider use of vinyl became more practical as new record players with relatively lightweight crystal pickups and precision-ground styli made of sapphire or an exotic osmium alloy proliferated. In late 1945, RCA Victor began offering special transparent red vinyl De Luxe pressings of some classical 78s, at a de luxe price. Later, Decca Records introduced vinyl Deccalite 78s, while other record companies came up with vinyl concoctions such as Metrolite, Merco Plastic and Sav-o-flex, but these were mainly used to produce "unbreakable" children's records and special thin vinyl DJ pressings for shipment to radio stations. |
In the 1890s, the recording formats of the earliest (toy) discs were mainly 12.5 cm (nominally five inches) in diameter; by the mid-1890s, the discs were usually 7 in (nominally 17.5 cm) in diameter. By 1910 the 10-inch (25.4 cm) record was by far the most popular standard, holding about three minutes of music or other entertainment on a side. From 1903 onwards, 12-inch records (30.5 cm) were also sold commercially, mostly of classical music or operatic selections, with four to five minutes of music per side. Victor, Brunswick and Columbia also issued 12-inch popular medleys, usually spotlighting a Broadway show score. However, other sizes did appear. Eight-inch discs with a 2-inch-diameter (51 mm) label became popular for about a decade in Britain, but they cannot be played in full on most modern record players because the tone arm cannot play far enough in toward the center without modification of the equipment. |
The playing time of a phonograph record depended on the turntable speed and the groove spacing. At the beginning of the 20th century, the early discs played for two minutes, the same as early cylinder records. The 12-inch disc, introduced by Victor in 1903, increased the playing time to three and a half minutes. Because a 10-inch 78 rpm record could hold about three minutes of sound per side and the 10-inch size was the standard size for popular music, almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. For example, when King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, including Louis Armstrong on his first recordings, recorded 13 sides at Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, in 1923, one side was 2:09 and four sides were 2:52–2:59. |
In January 1938, Milt Gabler started recording for his new label, Commodore Records, and to allow for longer continuous performances, he recorded some 12-inch records. Eddie Condon explained: "Gabler realized that a jam session needs room for development." The first two 12-inch recordings did not take advantage of the extra length: "Carnegie Drag" was 3:15; "Carnegie Jump", 2:41. But at the second session, on April 30, the two 12-inch recordings were longer: "Embraceable You" was 4:05; "Serenade to a Shylock", 4:32. Another way around the time limitation was to issue a selection on both sides of a single record. Vaudeville stars Gallagher and Shean recorded "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean", written by Irving and Jack Kaufman, as two sides of a 10-inch 78 in 1922 for Cameo. An obvious workaround for longer recordings was to release a set of records. An early multi-record release was in 1903, when HMV in England made the first complete recording of an opera, Verdi's Ernani, on 40 single-sided discs. In 1940, Commodore released Eddie Condon and his Band's recording of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" in four parts, issued on both sides of two 12-inch 78s. This limitation on the duration of recordings persisted from 1910 until the invention of the LP record, in 1948. In popular music, this time limitation of about 3:30 on a 10-inch 78 rpm record meant that singers usually did not release long pieces on record. One exception is Frank Sinatra's recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Soliloquy", from Carousel, made on May 28, 1946. Because it ran 7:57, longer than both sides of a standard 78 rpm 10-inch record, it was released on Columbia's Masterwork label (the classical division) as two sides of a 12-inch record. The same was true of John Raitt's performance of the song on the original cast album of Carousel, which had been issued on a 78-rpm album set by American Decca in 1945. |
German record company Odeon is often said to have pioneered the album in 1909 when it released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky on 4 double-sided discs in a specially designed package. (It is not indicated what size the records are.) However, Deutsche Grammophon had produced an album for its complete recording of the opera Carmen in the previous year. The practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been widely taken up by other record companies for many years; however, HMV provided an album, with a pictorial cover, for the 1917 recording of The Mikado (Gilbert & Sullivan). |
By about 1910,[note 1] bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records (the term "record album" was printed on some covers). These albums came in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. |
In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums, typically with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight tunes per album. When the 12-inch vinyl LP era began in 1949, the single record often had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, and was still often referred to as an "album". |
For collectable or nostalgia purposes, or for the benefit of higher-quality audio playback provided by the 78 rpm speed with newer vinyl records and their lightweight stylus pickups, a small number of 78 rpm records have been released since the major labels ceased production. One of the first attempts at this was in the 1950s, when inventor Ewing Dunbar Nunn founded the label Audiophile Records, which released, in addition to standard 33 1/3 rpm LPs, 78 rpm-mastered albums that were microgroove and pressed on vinyl (as opposed to traditional 78s, with their shellac composition and wider 3-mil sized grooves). This was done by the label mainly to take advantage of the wider audio frequency response that faster speeds like 78 rpm can provide for vinyl microgroove records, hence the label's name (obviously catering to the audiophiles of the 1950s "hi-fi" era, when stereo gear could provide a much wider range of audio than before). Also in the late 1950s, Bell Records released a few budget-priced 7" microgrooved records at 78 rpm. |
In 1968, Reprise planned to release a series of 78 rpm singles from their artists on their label at the time, called the Reprise Speed Series. Only one disc actually saw release, Randy Newman's I Think It's Going to Rain Today, a track from his self-titled debut album (with The Beehive State on the flipside). Reprise did not proceed further with the series due to a lack of sales for the single, and a lack of general interest in the concept. Guitarist & vocalist Leon Redbone released a promotional 78 rpm record in 1978 featuring two songs (Alabama Jubilee and Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone) from his Champagne Charlie album. In 1980 Stiff Records in the United Kingdom issued a 78 by Joe "King" Carrasco containing the songs Buena (Spanish for "good," with the alternate spelling "Bueno" on the label) and Tuff Enuff. Underground comic cartoonist and 78 rpm record collector Robert Crumb released three discs with his Cheap Suit Serenaders in the 1980s. |
In the 1990s Rhino Records issued a series of boxed sets of 78 rpm reissues of early rock and roll hits, intended for owners of vintage jukeboxes. This was a disaster because Rhino did not warn customers that their records were made of vinyl, and that the vintage 78 RPM juke boxes were designed with heavy tone arms and steel needles to play the hard shellac records of their time. This failure to warn customers gave the Rhino 78 records a bad reputation,[citation needed] as they were destroyed by old juke boxes and old record players but played very well on newer 78-capable turntables with modern lightweight tone arms and jewel needles. |
In 1931, RCA Victor launched the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as program-transcription discs. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33 1⁄3 rpm and pressed on a 30 cm diameter flexible plastic disc, with a duration of about ten minutes playing time per side. RCA Victor's early introduction of a long-play disc was a commercial failure for several reasons including the lack of affordable, reliable consumer playback equipment and consumer wariness during the Great Depression. Because of financial hardships that plagued the recording industry during that period (and RCA's own parched revenues), Victor's long-playing records were discontinued by early 1933. |
Vinyl's lower surface noise level than shellac was not forgotten, nor was its durability. In the late 1930s, radio commercials and pre-recorded radio programs being sent to disc jockeys started being stamped in vinyl, so they would not break in the mail. In the mid-1940s, special DJ copies of records started being made of vinyl also, for the same reason. These were all 78 rpm. During and after World War II, when shellac supplies were extremely limited, some 78 rpm records were pressed in vinyl instead of shellac, particularly the six-minute 12-inch (30 cm) 78 rpm records produced by V-Disc for distribution to United States troops in World War II. In the 1940s, radio transcriptions, which were usually on 16-inch records, but sometimes 12-inch, were always made of vinyl, but cut at 33 1⁄3 rpm. Shorter transcriptions were often cut at 78 rpm. |
Beginning in 1939, Dr. Peter Goldmark and his staff at Columbia Records and at CBS Laboratories undertook efforts to address problems of recording and playing back narrow grooves and developing an inexpensive, reliable consumer playback system. It took about eight years of study, except when it was suspended because of World War II. Finally, the 12-inch (30 cm) Long Play (LP) 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove record album was introduced by the Columbia Record Company at a New York press conference on June 18, 1948. |
Unwilling to accept and license Columbia's system, in February 1949 RCA Victor, in cooperation of its parent, the Radio Corporation of America, released the first 45 rpm single, 7 inches in diameter with a large center hole. The 45 rpm player included a changing mechanism that allowed multiple disks to be stacked, much as a conventional changer handled 78s. The short playing time of a single 45 rpm side meant that long works, such as symphonies, had to be released on multiple 45s instead of a single LP, but RCA claimed that the new high-speed changer rendered side breaks so brief as to be inaudible or inconsequential. Early 45 rpm records were made from either vinyl or polystyrene. They had a playing time of eight minutes. |
One early attempt at lengthening the playing time should be mentioned. At least one manufacturer in the early 1920s, World Records, produced records that played at a constant linear velocity, controlled by Noel Pemberton Billing's patented add-on governor device. As these were played from the outside to the inside, the rotational speed of the records increased as reproduction progressed. This action is similar (although in reverse) to that on the modern compact disc and the CLV version of its predecessor, the Philips Laser Disc. |
In 1925, 78.26 rpm was chosen as the standard because of the introduction of the electrically powered synchronous turntable motor. This motor ran at 3600 rpm, such that a 46:1 gear ratio would produce 78.26 rpm. In parts of the world that used 50 Hz current, the standard was 77.92 rpm (3,000 rpm with a 77:2 ratio), which was also the speed at which a strobe disc with 77 lines would "stand still" in 50 Hz light (92 lines for 60 Hz). After World War II these records were retroactively known as 78s, to distinguish them from other newer disc record formats. Earlier they were just called records, or when there was a need to distinguish them from cylinders, disc records. |
The older 78 format continued to be mass-produced alongside the newer formats using new materials until about 1960 in the U.S., and in a few countries, such as India (where some Beatles recordings were issued on 78), into the 1960s. For example, Columbia Records' last reissue of Frank Sinatra songs on 78 rpm records was an album called Young at Heart, issued November 1, 1954. As late as the 1970s, some children's records were released at the 78 rpm speed. In the United Kingdom, the 78 rpm single lasted longer than in the United States and the 45 rpm took longer to become popular. The 78 rpm was overtaken in popularity by the 45 rpm in the late 1950s, as teenagers became increasingly affluent. |
Some of Elvis Presley's early singles on Sun Records might have sold more copies on 78 than on 45. This is because the majority of those sales in 1954–55 were to the "hillbilly" market in the South and Southwestern United States, where replacing the family 78 rpm player with a new 45 rpm player was a luxury few could afford at the time. By the end of 1957, RCA Victor announced that 78s accounted for less than 10% of Presley's singles sales, essentially announcing the death throes of the 78 rpm format. The last Presley single released on 78 in the United States was RCA Victor 20-7410, I Got Stung/One Night (1958), while the last 78 in the UK was RCA 1194, A Mess Of Blues/Girl Of My Best Friend (1960). |
After World War II, two new competing formats came onto the market and gradually replaced the standard "78": the 33 1⁄3 rpm (often just referred to as the 33 rpm), and the 45 rpm (see above). The 33 1⁄3 rpm LP (for "long-play") format was developed by Columbia Records and marketed in June 1948. RCA Victor developed the 45 rpm format and marketed it in March 1949, each pursuing their own r&d in secret. Both types of new disc used narrower grooves, intended to be played with smaller stylus—typically 0.001 inches (25 µm) wide, compared to 0.003 inches (76 µm) for a 78—so the new records were sometimes called Microgroove. In the mid-1950s all record companies agreed to a common recording standard called RIAA equalization. Prior to the establishment of the standard each company used its own preferred standard, requiring discriminating listeners to use pre-amplifiers with multiple selectable equalization curves. |
Some recordings, such as books for the blind, were pressed at 16 2⁄3 rpm. Prestige Records released jazz records in this format in the late 1950s; for example, two of their Miles Davis albums were paired together in this format. Peter Goldmark, the man who developed the 33 1⁄3 rpm record, developed the Highway Hi-Fi 16 2⁄3 rpm record to be played in Chrysler automobiles, but poor performance of the system and weak implementation by Chrysler and Columbia led to the demise of the 16 2⁄3 rpm records. Subsequently, the 16 2⁄3 rpm speed was used for narrated publications for the blind and visually impaired, and were never widely commercially available, although it was common to see new turntable models with a 16 rpm speed setting produced as late as the 1970s. |
The commercial rivalry between RCA Victor and Columbia Records led to RCA Victor's introduction of what it had intended to be a competing vinyl format, the 7-inch (175 mm) 45 rpm disc. For a two-year period from 1948 to 1950, record companies and consumers faced uncertainty over which of these formats would ultimately prevail in what was known as the "War of the Speeds". (See also format war.) In 1949 Capitol and Decca adopted the new LP format and RCA gave in and issued its first LP in January 1950. The 45 rpm size was gaining in popularity, too, and Columbia issued its first 45s in February 1951. By 1954, 200 million 45s had been sold. |
Eventually the 12-inch (300 mm) 33 1⁄3 rpm LP prevailed as the predominant format for musical albums, and 10-inch LPs were no longer issued. The last Columbia Records reissue of any Frank Sinatra songs on a 10-inch LP record was an album called Hall of Fame, CL 2600, issued on October 26, 1956, containing six songs, one each by Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnnie Ray, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and Frankie Laine. The 10-inch LP however had a longer life in the United Kingdom, where important early British rock and roll albums such as Lonnie Donegan's Lonnie Donegan Showcase and Billy Fury's The Sound of Fury were released in that form. The 7-inch (175 mm) 45 rpm disc or "single" established a significant niche for shorter duration discs, typically containing one item on each side. The 45 rpm discs typically emulated the playing time of the former 78 rpm discs, while the 12-inch LP discs eventually provided up to one half-hour of recorded material per side. |
The 45 rpm discs also came in a variety known as extended play (EP), which achieved up to 10–15 minutes play at the expense of attenuating (and possibly compressing) the sound to reduce the width required by the groove. EP discs were cheaper to produce, and were used in cases where unit sales were likely to be more limited or to reissue LP albums on the smaller format for those people who had only 45 rpm players. LP albums could be purchased 1 EP at a time, with four items per EP, or in a boxed set with 3 EPs or 12 items. The large center hole on 45s allows for easier handling by jukebox mechanisms. EPs were generally discontinued by the late 1950s in the U.S. as three- and four-speed record players replaced the individual 45 players. One indication of the decline of the 45 rpm EP is that the last Columbia Records reissue of Frank Sinatra songs on 45 rpm EP records, called Frank Sinatra (Columbia B-2641) was issued on December 7, 1959. The EP lasted considerably longer in Europe, and was a popular format during the 1960s for recordings by artists such as Serge Gainsbourg and the Beatles. |
From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, in the U.S. the common home record player or "stereo" (after the introduction of stereo recording) would typically have had these features: a three- or four-speed player (78, 45, 33 1⁄3, and sometimes 16 2⁄3 rpm); with changer, a tall spindle that would hold several records and automatically drop a new record on top of the previous one when it had finished playing, a combination cartridge with both 78 and microgroove styli and a way to flip between the two; and some kind of adapter for playing the 45s with their larger center hole. The adapter could be a small solid circle that fit onto the bottom of the spindle (meaning only one 45 could be played at a time) or a larger adaptor that fit over the entire spindle, permitting a stack of 45s to be played. |
RCA 45s were also adapted to the smaller spindle of an LP player with a plastic snap-in insert known as a "spider". These inserts, commissioned by RCA president David Sarnoff and invented by Thomas Hutchison, were prevalent starting in the 1960s, selling in the tens of millions per year during the 45 rpm heyday. In countries outside the U.S., 45s often had the smaller album-sized holes, e.g., Australia and New Zealand, or as in the United Kingdom, especially before the 1970s, the disc had a small hole within a circular central section held only by three or four lands so that it could be easily punched out if desired (typically for use in jukeboxes). |
The term "high fidelity" was coined in the 1920s by some manufacturers of radio receivers and phonographs to differentiate their better-sounding products claimed as providing "perfect" sound reproduction. The term began to be used by some audio engineers and consumers through the 1930s and 1940s. After 1949 a variety of improvements in recording and playback technologies, especially stereo recordings, which became widely available in 1958, gave a boost to the "hi-fi" classification of products, leading to sales of individual components for the home such as amplifiers, loudspeakers, phonographs, and tape players. High Fidelity and Audio were two magazines that hi-fi consumers and engineers could read for reviews of playback equipment and recordings. |
Stereophonic sound recording, which attempts to provide a more natural listening experience by reproducing the spatial locations of sound sources in the horizontal plane, was the natural extension to monophonic recording, and attracted various alternative engineering attempts. The ultimately dominant "45/45" stereophonic record system was invented by Alan Blumlein of EMI in 1931 and patented the same year. EMI cut the first stereo test discs using the system in 1933 (see Bell Labs Stereo Experiments of 1933) although the system was not exploited commercially until much later. |
The development of quadraphonic records was announced in 1971. These recorded four separate sound signals. This was achieved on the two stereo channels by electronic matrixing, where the additional channels were combined into the main signal. When the records were played, phase-detection circuits in the amplifiers were able to decode the signals into four separate channels. There were two main systems of matrixed quadraphonic records produced, confusingly named SQ (by CBS) and QS (by Sansui). They proved commercially unsuccessful, but were an important precursor to later surround-sound systems, as seen in SACD and home cinema today. |
A different format, CD-4 (not to be confused with compact disc), by RCA, encoded the front-rear difference information on an ultrasonic carrier, which required a special wideband cartridge to capture it on carefully calibrated pickup arm/turntable combinations. CD-4 was even less successful than the two matrixed formats. (A further problem was that no cutting heads were available that could handle the HF information. That was remedied by cutting at half the speed. Later, the special half-speed cutting heads and equalization techniques were employed to get a wider frequency response in stereo with reduced distortion and greater headroom.) |
Under the direction of recording engineer C. Robert Fine, Mercury Records initiated a minimalist single microphone monaural recording technique in 1951. The first record, a Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance of Pictures at an Exhibition, conducted by Rafael Kubelik, was described as "being in the living presence of the orchestra" by The New York Times music critic. The series of records was then named Mercury Living Presence. In 1955, Mercury began three-channel stereo recordings, still based on the principle of the single microphone. The center (single) microphone was of paramount importance, with the two side mics adding depth and space. Record masters were cut directly from a three-track to two-track mixdown console, with all editing of the master tapes done on the original three-tracks. In 1961, Mercury enhanced this technique with three-microphone stereo recordings using 35 mm magnetic film instead of half-inch tape for recording. The greater thickness and width of 35 mm magnetic film prevented tape layer print-through and pre-echo and gained extended frequency range and transient response. The Mercury Living Presence recordings were remastered to CD in the 1990s by the original producer, Wilma Cozart Fine, using the same method of 3-to-2 mix directly to the master recorder. |
Through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, various methods to improve the dynamic range of mass-produced records involved highly advanced disc cutting equipment. These techniques, marketed, to name two, as the CBS DisComputer and Teldec Direct Metal Mastering, were used to reduce inner-groove distortion. RCA Victor introduced another system to reduce dynamic range and achieve a groove with less surface noise under the commercial name of Dynagroove. Two main elements were combined: another disk material with less surface noise in the groove and dynamic compression for masking background noise. Sometimes this was called "diaphragming" the source material and not favoured by some music lovers for its unnatural side effects. Both elements were reflected in the brandname of Dynagroove, described elsewhere in more detail. It also used the earlier advanced method of forward-looking control on groove spacing with respect to volume of sound and position on the disk. Lower recorded volume used closer spacing; higher recorded volume used wider spacing, especially with lower frequencies. Also, the higher track density at lower volumes enabled disk recordings to end farther away from the disk center than usual, helping to reduce endtrack distortion even further. |
Also in the late 1970s, "direct-to-disc" records were produced, aimed at an audiophile niche market. These completely bypassed the use of magnetic tape in favor of a "purist" transcription directly to the master lacquer disc. Also during this period, half-speed mastered and "original master" records were released, using expensive state-of-the-art technology. A further late 1970s development was the Disco Eye-Cued system used mainly on Motown 12-inch singles released between 1978 and 1980. The introduction, drum-breaks, or choruses of a track were indicated by widely separated grooves, giving a visual cue to DJs mixing the records. The appearance of these records is similar to an LP, but they only contain one track each side. |
The mid-1970s saw the introduction of dbx-encoded records, again for the audiophile niche market. These were completely incompatible with standard record playback preamplifiers, relying on the dbx compandor encoding/decoding scheme to greatly increase dynamic range (dbx encoded disks were recorded with the dynamic range compressed by a factor of two in dB: quiet sounds were meant to be played back at low gain and loud sounds were meant to be played back at high gain, via automatic gain control in the playback equipment; this reduced the effect of surface noise on quiet passages). A similar and very short-lived scheme involved using the CBS-developed "CX" noise reduction encoding/decoding scheme. |
ELPJ, a Japanese-based company, sells a laser turntable that uses a laser to read vinyl discs optically, without physical contact. The laser turntable eliminates record wear and the possibility of accidental scratches, which degrade the sound, but its expense limits use primarily to digital archiving of analog records, and the laser does not play back colored vinyl or picture discs. Various other laser-based turntables were tried during the 1990s, but while a laser reads the groove very accurately, since it does not touch the record, the dust that vinyl attracts due to static electric charge is not mechanically pushed out of the groove, worsening sound quality in casual use compared to conventional stylus playback. |
In some ways similar to the laser turntable is the IRENE scanning machine for disc records, which images with microphotography in two dimensions, invented by a team of physicists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. IRENE will retrieve the information from a laterally modulated monaural grooved sound source without touching the medium itself, but cannot read vertically modulated information. This excludes grooved recordings such as cylinders and some radio transcriptions that feature a hill-and-dale format of recording, and stereophonic or quadraphonic grooved recordings, which utilize a combination of the two as well as supersonic encoding for quadraphonic. |
Terms such as "long-play" (LP) and "extended-play" (EP) describe multi-track records that play much longer than the single-item-per-side records, which typically do not go much past four minutes per side. An LP can play for up to 30 minutes per side, though most played for about 22 minutes per side, bringing the total playing time of a typical LP recording to about forty-five minutes. Many pre-1952 LPs, however, played for about 15 minutes per side. The 7-inch 45 rpm format normally contains one item per side but a 7-inch EP could achieve recording times of 10 to 15 minutes at the expense of attenuating and compressing the sound to reduce the width required by the groove. EP discs were generally used to make available tracks not on singles including tracks on LPs albums in a smaller, less expensive format for those who had only 45 rpm players. The large center hole on 7-inch 45 rpm records allows for easier handling by jukebox mechanisms. The term "album", originally used to mean a "book" with liner notes, holding several 78 rpm records each in its own "page" or sleeve, no longer has any relation to the physical format: a single LP record, or nowadays more typically a compact disc. |
In March 1949, as RCA released the 45, Columbia released several hundred 7 inch 33 1/3 rpm small spindle hole singles. This format was soon dropped as it became clear that the RCA 45 was the single of choice and the Columbia 12 inch LP would be the 'album' of choice. The first release of the 45 came in seven colors: black 47-xxxx popular series, yellow 47-xxxx juvenile series, green (teal) 48-xxxx country series, deep red 49-xxxx classical series, bright red (cerise) 50-xxxx blues/spiritual series, light blue 51-xxxx international series, dark blue 52-xxxx light classics. All colors were soon dropped in favor of black because of production problems. However, yellow and deep red were continued until about 1952. The first 45 rpm record created for sale was "PeeWee the Piccolo" RCA 47-0147 pressed in yellow translucent vinyl at the Sherman Avenue plant, Indianapolis Dec. 7, 1948, R.O. Price, plant manager. |
The normal commercial disc is engraved with two sound-bearing concentric spiral grooves, one on each side, running from the outside edge towards the center. The last part of the spiral meets an earlier part to form a circle. The sound is encoded by fine variations in the edges of the groove that cause a stylus (needle) placed in it to vibrate at acoustic frequencies when the disc is rotated at the correct speed. Generally, the outer and inner parts of the groove bear no intended sound (an exception is Split Enz's Mental Notes). |
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