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Jun 22, 2023Liked by David Katznelson

I stopped reading at “Wah-lah!”

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Ba-boom!

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A couple months ago, in the link you shared to Ted Liebler's blog post detailing his uncle Ted Liebler's contributions as sound engineer on early Robert Johnson recordings and his participation in the development of the LP, it sounded like Peter Goldmark was not really the inventor:

"Edward (Ted) Wallerstein, President of Columbia Records from 1939 to 1951, emphasized both the collaborative effort and formative nature of this project: “...From Columbia Records there were Ike Rodman, Jim Hunter, Vin Liebler, and Bill Savory....Peter Goldmark was more or less the supervisor, although he didn't actually do any of the work"

http://wendy-city.blogspot.com/2021/03/vincent-liebler-shaping-360-sound.html

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I love this insight and am so glad you reminded me about this story!!! My gut says that somewhere between this blog post and what is common knowledge is the truth. Goldmark does come off in history books as a genius....same guy who invented the color television...but you have to think that there were others that were deeply involved and made just as much as an impact on the final invention.

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Jun 21, 2023·edited Jun 21, 2023

The original history from Edward Wallerstein, from 1948, has a lot of detail:

http://www.musicinthemail.com/audiohistoryLP.html

"I want to emphasize that the project was all a team effort. No one man can be said to have "invented" the LP, which in any case was not, strictly speaking, an invention, but a development. The team of Liebler, Bachman, Savory, Hunter, and Kodman was responsible for it. If one man is to be singled out, it would have to be Bachman, whose work on the heated stylus, automatic variable pitch control, and most especially the variable reluctance pickup was a starting point for a great deal of what was to come."

Nothing against Goldmark, but that's the president of Columbia talking about it in 1948.

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