Patent Search for Materials, Equipment, and
Methods Relating to the Composition, Manufacture, and
Playback of Instantaneous Discs, 1927 - 1942

INTRODUCTION

Between the soaring popularity of recorded sound on the disc of the early twentieth century and the high-fidelity recording capabilities of magnetic tape achieved after World War II lies the brief but enthusiastic niche of the instantaneous disc. Developed in the 1930s and used well into the late 1940s and 1950s as an inexpensive and accessible method of recording, the instantaneous disc was different from commercially distributed records. The instantaneous disc – sometimes called lacquers, acetates (quite erroneously, according to Peter Copeland ), transcription discs, old time radio (OTR) recordings, Insta-discs, dubs, or reference recordings – was a “compromise of ease of engraving and playback life,” composed of softer materials than mass produced phonographs and thus more fragile and susceptible to the hazards of playback. Created using a special turntable either acoustically or magnetically, instantaneous discs created immediately available recordings that were unique, consumer-initiated sonic time capsules of a period in which media innovations were broadening and linking the world in a way quite similar to present day computer technology and the internet.

Peter Copeland, Conservation Manager and sound engineer at the British Library Sound Archive, credits the invention of the instantaneous disc to Cecil Watts, who in 1934 discovered that discs with a surface coating of cellulose nitrate (or nitrocellulose) were soft enough to allow grooves to be cut yet sturdy enough to allow a few playbacks on common record players. Although it is arguable that instantaneous disc recordings were available throughout the advancing material history of the sound recording disc, it seems that the specific manufacture of instantaneous discs and the devices on which to record these discs for wide-spread use begins in 1934 with the cellulose nitrate laminate disc. Materials in use prior to cellulose nitrate include laminated discs coated with soft wax, ethyl cellulose, and cellulose acetate, as well as discs solely composed of soft metals such as aluminum or zinc. Cellulose nitrate, while certainly not a champion of stability, is however much more durable and has better playback sound quality than its soft wax or ethyl cellulose counterparts, which may be part of the reason that instantaneous discs are widely understood to be composed of only that material. Also, very few aluminum or other soft metal discs are still in existence; Elizabeth McLeod, documentarian of early radio, notes that during the scrap drives of World War II, citizens were urged to turn in as much aluminum as they could for recycling. Thousands of unique recordings were lost when “patriotic performers could see no reason to hold onto ten years of old broadcasts when there was a war to be won.”

METHODOLOGY

U.S. Patent information from 1790 to present is available online. While more recent patents (1976 - present) are available as searchable text fields (author, title, abstract, date, etc.) with separated image files for drawings and specs, earlier patents (1790 - 1975) are available only as images, which renders them unsearchable by anything but patent number and current U.S. classification. To overcome this obstacle, several search terms that describe the materials, equipment, and methods relating to the composition, manufacture, and playback of instantaneous discs were generated: "cellulose nitrate" and its alternate "nitro-cellulose," "instantaneous," "phonograph," and "record" were the main search terms, while other headings searched include "lacquers," "Watts, Cecil," "Presto Recording Company," and several key people related to the beginning of Presto Recording Company, the first manufacturer of instantaneous discs. These search terms were then looked up in the U.S. Patent Indexes, published annually and currently held in the stacks collection of the UT Engineering Library. For the scope of this project, the early history of patents related to instantaneous discs was examined, ranging from U.S. Patent Indexes 1930 - 1942. The Patent Indexes do not necessarily include patents filed from that year; most often, patents filed from up to three or four years earlier are listed in any given year index -- for instance, Cecil Watts filed his original patent application for a Telegravure Apparatus on December 31, 1930, and this patent is listed in the 1933 index as being accepted on January 24.

An alternative method of searching patents is the utilization of the horribly confusing and unnavigable current U.S. Classification system. By selecting a search term ("phonograph," for instance), one can find categories and sub-categories related to the term. In a stroke of luck, the first term related to phonograph is "phonograph blank," and this classification was further subdivided into categories describing either the method of recording (optical, magnetic) or the components of the phonograph blank (metals such as aluminum, tellurium, and chromium). The drawback to this process is that the webpages for the classification system are quite lengthy -- generally more than 2 MB in size for pages containing predominately text -- and not only take a while to download but are difficult to navigate and search. One avenue that was completely explored was the 64.2 -- CIRCULAR SHEET OR CIRCULAR BLANK / Recording medium or carrier classification which returned nearly patents related to instantaneous discs. Listed in the table below, the online results returned the patent number (which linked to image files of the patent records) and the related classifications.

RESULTS

My research on patents did not yield what I had hoped for -- locating the patents of the inventor of instantaneous discs, as credited by Peter Copeland of the British Library: Cecil Watts. Nor was I able to find patents relating to Presto Recording Company -- credited as the first mass-producer of instantaneous discs in the United States. When searching for patents related to Presto, I also searched under the names of employees of the company likely to have been involved in the patent filing process, all to no avail.

A second obstacle to the research was the shear size of information that I located -- both in terms of amount of information to read and digest as well as the mere sizes of the image files that one must download if any hopes of conducting patent research pre-1975 are to be entertained. Due to these problems, I was able to only, over the course of this semester, generate a database of patents; unfortunately, I was not able to do much in the way of comparison and analysis of the patents nor provide a historical and cultural context for the patents found.

FUTURE PLANS

In the continued effort to become the leading world expert on instantaneous discs, I will need to thoroughly digest the patent research I've begun this semester as well as to explore the years beyond 1942 -- aiming, roughly, towards the introduction of magnetic audio tape in the United States and market acceptance of that medium which occurred by the mid 1950s, at the latest.

Since obviously every method or recipe patented does not become widely available on the market, I need to establish a way to distinguish between instantaneous patents that never saw the light of day and those that were used by the major corporations such as Wilcox Gay, Duodisc, Victor, Presto, Howard, and others. I also need to determine a way to relate the individuals who file patents (generally, attorneys) to these major corporations who manufacture the discs.

1936 - oct 6

2,209,834
2,209,836
2,209,835

1939 - mar 7

2,217,506
2,217,507