I once had a record player which could be adjusted to play discs at 78, 45, 33 and 16 RPM speeds. I have never in my life seen a record which plays at 16 RPM. Does anyone know anything about these discs - Were such records ever manufactured?

Senior Moments

http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/Digests/200007/2000.07.12.13.html has the following:- Phonograph Turntable Speeds By Adam G. Ramet Jeffery Borinsky wrote about the 16 rpm turntable speed. My understanding of the format was that yes they were primarily intended for speech and more importantly they were intended as a format for blind people who could listen to the very long playing disks without the need to change sides and change disk so frequently. Speech for 'talking books', etc., playing at 16 rpm, would be ideal for blind listeners. My uncle has a few 16 rpm records from the 60's in his large collection. I've never encountered any other 16 rpm records personally. I have an old 60's player which plays the format though. I agree with Jeffrey that most UK made turntables (Garrard, etc.) seem to have been made with 4 {speeds;} most have the autochanger spindles also. For 16 rpm records intended for the blind the added benefit of an autochanger on the player is immediately obvious. The player could play for literally hours unattended Jan 05 03, 11:21 PM

Kainantu

They do exist. I used to play 16 2/3 'spoken word' records (from the Kaimuki Public Library) on my early '70's system.. There's been an enormous evolution in needle/cartridge design from the 50's, still going on, but I haven't been keeping up. You might check with: The Needle Doctor 800-229-0644 http://www.needledoctor.com http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Accessories/HiWay/ModernPlayers.html Who decided that vinyl records should be played at 45 and 33 rpm? And why did 16 and 78 rpm records die out? Mark Wharton, Cleckheaton UK No-one's entirely sure, as stories vary amongst those involved in the experiments but 16rpm records died out due to their poor sound quality (they were really only suitable for spoken word recordings) and it's believed that 33rpm was chosen as it was (roughly) double the existing long-playing speed. I read a recollection from an Abbey Road engineer that 40 rpm was experimented with prior to arriving at {45;} the fact that 33 and 45 added together makes 78 may or may not be co-incidental in arriving at the latter figure. The hard-wearing shellac 78 was more expensive to produce than a plastic 7' 45 and thus the latter was favoured by record labels. A bit scattershot, but that's about all I've been able to glean over the years. Alistair Crosbie, Glasgow, UK Guardian Unlimited %A9 Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23936,00.html Jan 05 03, 11:28 PM

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I have a 78rpm record of Mr A Silstone playing the Liberty Horn. I know that you blow it and pluck strings on it at the same time (really!) but I can find no information about it. Record is about 80 years old. Can anyone help? How many grooves does the average 12 inch 33-1/3 RPM record have? How many grooves are there in a 33 rpm record? What is the RPM of an old record?

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