An addition to your explanation of record “album”: Going back before 33-1/3s, records could only be produced at 78 rpm, which allowed much less time per side. A song could fit on one side, but a classical symphony needed both sides of several disks.
Often, the multiple disks were assembled into an — wait for it — album, which consisted of the paper sleeves which held the disks bound between hardboard covers. This was more similar to a picture album, or whatever “album” referred to before.
The single disk 78-rpm albums took the term from the older 33-1/3 albums.
I hadn’t realized the association to “albums” of records… but despite being at least two generations too young for this to have been likely, I had a fair number of 78rpm records when I was young (including at least one which was made of ceramic).
David H. Hendon:
October 28th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
78 rpm records and albums preceded 33-1/3 records/albums, the latter having first appeared in the late 1940’s. It was the 78 rpm multi-record sets described that gave the term “album” to the 33-1/3 records and continues to apply to muliple “recordings” (on its way to functional obsolescence) in some sort of formal connection (as on a record, tape or CD), principally of music.
Another rather obvious word anachronism is “dial” as to dial a phone number. Rotary dials on telephones are a real rarity if they continue to exist operationally at all, in the 21st century.
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gS49:
October 5th, 2010 at 9:26 am
An addition to your explanation of record “album”: Going back before 33-1/3s, records could only be produced at 78 rpm, which allowed much less time per side. A song could fit on one side, but a classical symphony needed both sides of several disks.
Often, the multiple disks were assembled into an — wait for it — album, which consisted of the paper sleeves which held the disks bound between hardboard covers. This was more similar to a picture album, or whatever “album” referred to before.
The single disk 78-rpm albums took the term from the older 33-1/3 albums.
Gordon Schumacher:
October 30th, 2010 at 2:52 am
I hadn’t realized the association to “albums” of records… but despite being at least two generations too young for this to have been likely, I had a fair number of 78rpm records when I was young (including at least one which was made of ceramic).
David H. Hendon:
October 28th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
78 rpm records and albums preceded 33-1/3 records/albums, the latter having first appeared in the late 1940’s. It was the 78 rpm multi-record sets described that gave the term “album” to the 33-1/3 records and continues to apply to muliple “recordings” (on its way to functional obsolescence) in some sort of formal connection (as on a record, tape or CD), principally of music.
Another rather obvious word anachronism is “dial” as to dial a phone number. Rotary dials on telephones are a real rarity if they continue to exist operationally at all, in the 21st century.