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  • BBC use of "transcription disks" (78 rpm shellac-on-aluminium) - when

    From NY@21:1/5 to All on Mon Sep 30 14:02:20 2024
    I'm trying to estimate a range of dates when a recording of my grandpa
    giving a talk on Children's Hour might have been recorded. We have a BBC "transcription disk" of the recording. When would BBC have stopped using
    those and starting giving participants mag tape instead? I suppose they may have offered 78 rpm as a legacy format even after they changed to use mag
    tape internally, for people who had a record player capable of playing 78s
    but not a tape recorder, though later on cassette as a format probably
    became the standard for participants' copies.

    AFAIK the talk was given at the BBC's Manchester studio. The talk is
    legendary in the family because my grandpa, who was a headmaster from the
    West Riding, was told that his native (and very mild) West Riding accent
    would be "incomprehensible" to boys and girls from the Home Counties, so he should try to adopt a more neutral (ie Bob Danvers-Walker or Mr Cholmondley-Warner) accent. He took great offence at being told this, especially by a Mancunian from "The Other County", so he rebelled by
    adopting an accent that is unknown in the human world, hamming it up and exaggerating his Home Counties vowels as much as possible. He was talking
    about steam locomotives and at one point he says "the exhaust steam is
    camming aout of the chimney laike a ballett fram a machine gan". If I ever wanted to wind him up, all I needed to say was "laike a ballett fram a
    machine gan".

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  • From charles@21:1/5 to me@privacy.invalid on Mon Sep 30 18:00:02 2024
    In article <vde7he$28ddm$1@dont-email.me>, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
    I'm trying to estimate a range of dates when a recording of my grandpa
    giving a talk on Children's Hour might have been recorded. We have a BBC "transcription disk" of the recording. When would BBC have stopped using those and starting giving participants mag tape instead? I suppose they
    may have offered 78 rpm as a legacy format even after they changed to
    use mag tape internally, for people who had a record player capable of playing 78s but not a tape recorder, though later on cassette as a
    format probably became the standard for participants' copies.

    AFAIK the talk was given at the BBC's Manchester studio. The talk is legendary in the family because my grandpa, who was a headmaster from the West Riding, was told that his native (and very mild) West Riding accent would be "incomprehensible" to boys and girls from the Home Counties, so
    he should try to adopt a more neutral (ie Bob Danvers-Walker or Mr Cholmondley-Warner) accent. He took great offence at being told this, especially by a Mancunian from "The Other County", so he rebelled by
    adopting an accent that is unknown in the human world, hamming it up and exaggerating his Home Counties vowels as much as possible. He was talking about steam locomotives and at one point he says "the exhaust steam is camming aout of the chimney laike a ballett fram a machine gan". If I
    ever wanted to wind him up, all I needed to say was "laike a ballett
    fram a machine gan".

    According to Pawley: by 1955 magnetic tape accounted for 60% of the work,
    by 1960 the figure was nearly 80%. During 1956 The Regions were each
    provided with an editing suite of 3 tape recorders.

    --
    from KT24 in Surrey, England - sent from my RISC OS 4té˛
    "I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

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  • From Liz Tuddenham@21:1/5 to me@privacy.invalid on Mon Sep 30 20:47:57 2024
    NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:

    I'm trying to estimate a range of dates when a recording of my grandpa
    giving a talk on Children's Hour might have been recorded. We have a BBC "transcription disk" of the recording.

    The transcription discs were cellulose nitrate lacquer on aluminium, the shellac mixture was only used for pressings when the number of copies
    was sufficient to justify the cost of processing a lacquer disc into a
    metal stamper.

    When would BBC have stopped using
    those and starting giving participants mag tape instead?

    The changeover to tape was gradual and rolled out across the regions as
    the machines and material became available. Discs which were prexented
    to performers would still have been recorded on lacquer for some time
    after tape was in general studio use.

    If your disc is recorded to RIAA standard it would have been made
    specially for presentation after 1955. If it was recorded to 'Blumlein
    300 or 500" it would have been before that date. Only if it is to BBC
    'D' standard (2db/octave) would it have been an internal recording
    intended for playing into a programme.


    --
    ~ Liz Tuddenham ~
    (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
    www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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