We’re moving back in time, before the mp3 player and the CD. We’re going back to the analog age, a moment when the shellac (and later vinyl) record reigned supreme. The month is June 1937. And the short film you’re watching is “Record Making with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra.” How the film came into being was described in the July 1937 edition of Melody News:
Last month, a crew of cameramen, electricians and technicians from the Paramount film company set up their paraphernalia in the recording studios of Master Records, Inc. for the purpose of gathering ‘location’ scenes for a movie short, now in production, showing how phonograph records are produced and manufactured. Duke Ellington and his orchestra was employed for the studio scenes, with Ivie Anderson doing the vocals.
Narrated by Alois Havrilla, a pioneer radio announcer, the film shows you how records were actually recorded, plated and pressed. It’s a great relic from the shellac/vinyl era, which you will want to couple with this 1956 vinyl tutorial from RCA Victor.
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Shellac, surely?
NOT vinyl! Records from this era were made of shellac.
The entire premise of this article is ruined by using the word vinyl, which was not used for records for another full decade.
There’s a clue in the article you quote, which refers to phonograph records.
In those days records were made out of a snellac based compound, commonly just called shellac. Vinyl was rarely used until after World War II in the late 1940s.