Phonograph record
A phonograph record is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. At first, the discs were made from shellac. In recent decades, records have sometimes been called vinyl records, or vinyl; the phonograph disc record was the primary medium used for music reproduction throughout the 20th century. It had co-existed with the phonograph cylinder from the late 1880s and had superseded it by around 1912. Records retained the largest market share when new formats such as the compact cassette were mass-marketed. By the 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. Since the 1990s, records continue to be manufactured and sold on a smaller scale, are used by disc jockeys and released by artists in dance music genres, listened to by a growing niche market of audiophiles; the phonograph record has made a notable niche resurgence in the early 21st century – 9.2 million records were sold in the U.
S. in 2014, a 260% increase since 2009. In the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014; as of 2017, 48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide, 18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new and modern record-pressing machines. Only two producers of lacquers remain: Apollo Masters in California, MDC in Japan. Phonograph records are described by their diameter in inches, the rotational speed in revolutions per minute at which they are played, their time capacity, determined by their diameter and speed. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to high heat, carelessly handled or broken, a vinyl record has the potential to last for centuries; the large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression when it comes to the long play vinyl LP. The phonautograph, patented by Léon Scott in 1857, used a vibrating diaphragm and stylus to graphically record sound waves as tracings on sheets of paper, purely for visual analysis and without any intent of playing them back.
In the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008. Along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Unlike the phonautograph, it could both record and reproduce sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no documentary evidence that Edison's phonograph was based on Scott's phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a wax-impregnated paper tape, with the idea of creating a "telephone repeater" analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. Although the visible results made him confident that sound could be physically recorded and reproduced, his notes do not indicate that he reproduced sound before his first experiment in which he used tinfoil as a recording medium several months later.
The tinfoil was wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately; the Scientific American article that introduced the tinfoil phonograph to the public mentioned Marey and Barlow as well as Scott as creators of devices for recording but not reproducing sound. Edison invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. Numerous applications for the phonograph were envisioned, but although it enjoyed a brief vogue as a startling novelty at public demonstrations, the tinfoil phonograph proved too crude to be put to any practical use. A decade Edison developed a improved phonograph that used a hollow wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet; this proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device. The wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Lateral-cut disc records were developed in the United States by Emile Berliner, who named his system the "gramophone", distinguishing it from Edison's wax cylinder "phonograph" and American Graphophone's wax cylinder "graphophone".
Berliner's earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, were played with a small hand-propelled machine. Both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality. In the United States in 1894, under the Berliner Gramophone trademark, Berliner started marketing records of 7 inches diameter with somewhat more substantial entertainment value, along with somewhat more substantial gramophones to play them. Berliner's records had poor sound quality compared to wax cylinders, but his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson improved it. Abandoning Berliner's "Gramophone" tradem
Listerine
Listerine is a brand of antiseptic mouthwash product. It is promoted with the slogan "Kills germs that cause bad breath". Named after Joseph Lister, a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, Listerine was developed in 1879 by Joseph Lawrence, a chemist in St. Louis, Missouri. Marketed by the Lambert Pharmacal Company, Listerine has been manufactured and distributed by Johnson & Johnson since that company's acquisition of Pfizer's consumer healthcare division in late December 2006; the Listerine brand name is used in toothpaste, Listerine Whitening rinse, Listerine Fluoride rinse, Listerine SmartRinse, PocketPaks, PocketMist. In September 2007, Listerine began selling its own brand of self-dissolving teeth-whitening strips. Inspired by Louis Pasteur's ideas on microbial infection, the English doctor Joseph Lister demonstrated in 1865 that use of carbolic acid on surgical dressings would reduce rates of post-surgical infection. Lister's work in turn inspired St. Louis-based doctor Joseph Lawrence to develop an alcohol-based formula for a surgical antiseptic which included eucalyptol, methyl salicylate, thymol.
Lawrence named his antiseptic "Listerine" in honor of Lister. Lawrence hoped to promote Listerine's use as a general germicide as well as a surgical antiseptic, licensed his formula to a local pharmacist named Jordan Wheat Lambert in 1881. Lambert subsequently started the Lambert Pharmacal Company. Listerine was promoted to dentists for oral care in 1895 and was the first over-the-counter mouthwash sold in the United States, in 1914, it became known and entered common household use after Jordan Wheat Lambert's son Gerard Lambert joined the company and promoted an aggressive marketing campaign. According to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's book Freakonomics: Listerine, for instance, was invented in the nineteenth century as powerful surgical antiseptic, it was sold, in distilled form, as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis" — a obscure medical term for bad breath. Listerine's new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate's rotten breath.
"Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" One maiden asked herself. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered such a catastrophe, but Listerine changed that. As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." In just seven years, the company's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million. In 1955, Lambert Pharmacal merged with New York-based Warner-Hudnut and became Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company and incorporated in Delaware with its corporate headquarters in Morris Plains, New Jersey. In 2000, Pfizer acquired Warner-Lambert. Among Lambert's assets was the original land for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. From 1921 until the mid-1970s, Listerine was marketed as preventive and remedy for colds and sore throats. In 1976, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that these claims were misleading, that Listerine had "no efficacy" at either preventing or alleviating the symptoms of sore throats and colds.
Warner-Lambert was ordered to stop making the claims, to include in the next $10.2 million worth of Listerine ads specific mention that "Listerine will not help prevent colds or sore throats or lessen their severity." The advertisement run by Listerine added the preamble "contrary to prior advertising". For a short time, beginning in 1927, the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company marketed Listerine Cigarettes. From the 1930s into the 1950s, advertisements claimed that applying Listerine to the scalp could prevent "infectious dandruff". Listerine was packaged in a glass bottle inside a corrugated cardboard tube for nearly 80 years before the first revamps were made to the brand: in 1992, Cool Mint Listerine was introduced in addition to the original Listerine Antiseptic formula and, in 1994, both brands were introduced in plastic bottles for the first time. In 1995, FreshBurst was added in 2003 Natural Citrus. In 2006 a new addition to the "less intense" variety, Vanilla Mint, was released. Nine different kinds of Listerine are on the market in the U.
S. and elsewhere: Original, Cool Mint, FreshBurst, Natural Citrus, Soft Mint, UltraClean, Tooth Defense, Whitening pre-brush rinse. The active ingredients listed on Listerine packaging are essential oils which are menthol 0.042%, thymol 0.064%, methyl salicylate 0.06%, eucalyptol 0.092%. In combination all have an antiseptic effect and there is some thought that methyl salicylate may have an anti inflammatory effect as well. Ethanol, toxic to bacteria at concentrations of 40%, is present in concentrations of 21.6% in the flavored product and 26.9% in the original gold Listerine Antiseptic. At this concentration, the ethanol serves to dissolve the active ingredients; the addition of the active ingredients means the ethanol is considered to be undrinkable, known as denatured alcohol, it is therefore not regulated as an alcoholic beverage in the United States. However, consumption of mouthwash to obtain intoxication does occur among alcoholics and underage drinkers. There has been concern that the use of alcohol-containing mouthwash such as Listerine may increase the risk of developing oral cancer.
As of 2010, 7 meta-analyses have found no connection betwee
Waikiki
Waikiki is a neighborhood of Honolulu on the south shore of the island of Oʻahu in the United States state of Hawaii. Waikiki is most famous for Waikiki Beach, one of six beaches in the district, along with Queen's Beach, Kuhio Beach, Gray's Beach, Fort DeRussy Beach and Kahanamoku Beach. Waikiki Beach is entirely man-made. Waikiki is home to public places including Kapiʻolani Park, Fort DeRussy, Kahanamoku Lagoon, Kūhiō Beach Park and Ala Wai Harbor; the Hawaiian language name Waikīkī means spouting fresh water, for springs and streams that fed wetlands that once separated Waikiki from the interior. The area was a retreat for Hawaiian royalty in the 1800s who enjoyed surfing there on early forms of longboards. A few small hotels opened in the 1880s. In 1893, Greek-American George Lycurgus leased the guest house of Allen Herbert and renamed it the "Sans Souci" creating one of the first beach resorts; that year Robert Louis Stevenson stayed at the resort. The area at coordinates 21°15′49″N 157°49′17″W is still called "Sans Souci Beach".
Waikiki has had erosion problems since the late-1800s, because hotels and homes were built too close to the natural shoreline, while seawalls and other structures blocked the natural ebb and flow of sand along the beach. By 1950, more than 80 structures, including seawalls, groins and storm drains, occupied the Waikiki shoreline; the area became filled with large resort hotels, such as the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, Marriott Waikiki, Sheraton Waikiki, historic hotels dating back to the early 20th century. The beach hosts many events, including surf competitions, outdoor performances, hula dancing and outrigger canoe races; the many amenities and hotels enable Waikiki to generate 42 percent of Hawaiʻi's visitor revenue. In the early 1900s, Waikiki was home to many wetlands, which were believed to harbor disease-carrying mosquitoes. To get rid of the mosquitoes, islanders created the Ala Wai canal; the canal known as the Waikiki Drainage Canal, was created by a Hawaiian dredging company run by Walter F. Dillingham.
The project took about seven years, 1921-1928. In the early 20th century, Duke Kahanamoku became a well-known surfer in Waikiki. Throughout his life and after competing in the Olympics, many people around the world wanted to learn to surf. Duke's influence made Waikiki beach a surfing hotspot. "Dukes", a club in Waikiki named for Kahanamoku, helped Don Ho produce music and hosted the longest-running show in Waikiki. In the 1920s and 1930s sand was imported from Manhattan Beach, via ship and barge. In the early 1900s, plans for the Ala Wai Canal were developed to help with drainage and seawalls and groynes began to appear; these helped build sand at one beach, but appropriated sand from others. Before 1950, Waikiki beaches were continuous, they became separated into some with sandy beach and others without. Following World War II, Waikiki beach restoration efforts have occurred every few years. Sand was imported to this artificial beach from the 1920s to the 1970s, once by boat and barge from Southern California.
1,730 feet of shoreline was replenished at a cost of $2.4 million following chronic erosion of more than a foot a year. Importing stopped in the 1970s. In March 1971, the Department of the Army Pacific Ocean Division, created a Draft Environmental Statement for the Kuhio Beach Sector of Waikiki, which aimed to improve the overall quality and size of the fading and narrowing shoreline. On October 29–November 4, 2000, the first FINA World Open Water Swimming Championships, were held in the waters off Waikiki Beach. A partial restoration was completed in the spring of 2012; the project imported sand from nearby shoals and widened the 1,700-foot long beach by about 37 feet between the Royal Hawaiian Hotel concrete groyne and the Kūhiō Beach crib wall. The project temporarily restored the beach to its 1985 shoreline. Two aging sandbag groyne structures were removed in 2012. In 2017, beach erosion worsened with “king tides” along with elevated sea level. Honolulu's mayor stated: “I’m not a scientist, but I’ll get a jackhammer in there and remove all the concrete that’s there creating this backwash and sucking out more sand, plus it’s just downright dangerous.”
The neighborhood extends to Diamond Head on the east. Waikiki Beach is noted for its views of the Diamond Head tuff cone, its warm and cloud-free climate and its surf break; the Waikiki skyline is filled with high-rises and resort hotels. Half of the beach is marked off for surfers. For some distance into the ocean the water is quite shallow, with numerous rocks on the bottom; the waves can have some force on windy days. The surf is known for its long rolling break, making it ideal for long boarding, tandem surfing and beginners; as a result of shoreline development, Waikiki has eight distinct beaches. They are Ft. DeRussy, Duke Kahanamoku, Royal Hawaiian, Kapiolani and Kaimana. Since 1951, nearly 80,000 cubic meters of sand have been added to restore Waikiki beaches. Today, however, it is believed that little of the added sand remains. From the beach the sunset in the sea is visible from mid-September to late March Ala Moana Beach Park, Hawaii's single most popular beach, is adjacent to but not technically part of Waikiki, was artificially made.
Waikiki's main thoroughfare is Kalakaua Avenue, named after King Kalakaua, whic
Aloha shirt
The Aloha shirt referred to as a Hawaiian shirt, is a style of dress shirt originating in Hawaii. It is the premier textile export of the Hawaii manufacturing industry; the dress shirts are printed short-sleeved, collared. They have buttons, sometimes for the entire length of the dress shirt and sometimes just down to the chest. Aloha dress shirts have a left chest pocket sewn in with attention to ensure the printed pattern remains continuous. Aloha shirts may be worn by women; the lower hem is straight. Aloha shirts exported to the mainland United States and elsewhere are called Hawaiian shirts, are brilliantly colored with floral patterns or generic Polynesian motifs, they are worn as informal wear. Traditional men's Aloha shirts, manufactured for local Hawaiian residents, are adorned with traditional Hawaiian quilt designs, tapa designs, simple floral patterns in more muted colors. Contemporary Aloha shirts may have prints that do not feature any traditional Hawaiian quilt or floral designs but instead may incorporate drinks, palm trees, surf boards or other island tropical elements arranged in the same pattern as a traditional Aloha shirt.
Aloha shirts manufactured for local use are considered formal wear in business and government and are thus regarded as equivalent to a shirt and tie in all but the most formal of settings. Malihini and tourists wear designs of many bright colors, while Kamaʻāina seem to prefer less busy patterns; these shirts are printed on the interior, resulting in the muted color on the exterior, are called "reverse print". Those not familiar with this practice might consider it to be a manufacturing defect because the shirt appears to be sewn together inside-out; the related concept of "Aloha Attire" stems from the Aloha shirt. Semi-formal functions such as weddings, birthday parties, dinners are designated as "Aloha Attire", meaning that men wear Aloha shirts and women wear muumuu or other tropical prints; because Hawaii tends to be more casual, it is appropriate to attend such functions in full evening wear like on the mainland. "Aloha Friday", a now-common tradition of celebrating the end of the workweek by wearing more casual attire on Fridays grew out of an effort to promote Aloha shirts.
Although it is not uncommon to see professional women participating in Aloha Friday, it is more common to see men dressing this way. According to The Honolulu Advertiser's advertisement of June 28, 1935, the Aloha Shirt was first sold at "Musashi-ya shoten" in Honolulu, was preceded as "Musashi-ya", established by Japanese immigrant Chōtarō Miyamoto in 1904. After Miyamoto’s death, in 1915, the shop was revised as "Musashiya shoten" (Japanese title: 武蔵屋呉服店 by his son Kōichirō Miyamoto, who sewed Aloha shirt using Japanese Kimono fabrics and sold it first; the modern Aloha shirt was devised in the early 1930s by Chinese merchant Ellery Chun of King-Smith Clothiers and Dry Goods, a store in Waikiki. The first advertisement in The Honolulu Advertiser for Chun's Aloha shirt was published on June 28, 1935. Local residents surfers, tourists descended on Chun's store and bought every shirt he had. Within years, major designer labels sprung up all over Hawaii and began manufacturing and selling Aloha shirts en masse.
By the end of the 1930s, 450 people were employed in an industry worth $600,000 annually. Retail chains in Hawaii, including mainland based ones, may mass-produce a single aloha shirt design for employee uniforms. After World War II, many servicemen and servicewomen returned to the United States from Asia and the Pacific islands with aloha shirts made in Hawaii since the 1930s. Tourists began flocking to Hawaii in the 1950s as faster airplanes allowed for easier travel and the former U. S. territory became a state in 1959. Alfred Shaheen, a textile manufacturer, revolutionized the garment industry in postwar Hawaii by designing and producing aloha shirts and other ready-to-wear items under one roof; the tropical-print shirts for men and sundresses for women became standard and sometimes tacky souvenirs for travelers, but Shaheen raised the garments to the level of high fashion with artistic prints, high-grade materials and quality construction. Tori Richard is a brand of these shirts, established in Honolulu in late 1956.
Elvis Presley wore a Shaheen-designed red aloha shirt featured on the album cover for the Blue Hawaii soundtrack in 1961. In 1946, the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce funded a study of aloha shirts and designs for comfortable business clothing worn during the hot Hawaiian summers; the City and County of Honolulu passed a resolution allowing their employees to wear sport shirts from June–October. City employees were not allowed to wear aloha shirts for business until the creation of the Aloha Week festival in 1947; the Aloha Week festival was motivated by both cultural and economic concerns: First held at Ala Moana Park in October, the festival revived interest in ancient Hawaiian music, dancing and traditions. There was a holoku ball, a floral parade, a makahiki festival attended by 8,000 people. Economically, the week-long event first attracted visitors during October - traditionally a slow month for tourism - which benefited the Hawaiian fashion industry as they supplied the muʻumuʻu and aloha shirts worn for the celebration.
Aloha Week expanded in 1974 to six islands
Vibraphone
The vibraphone is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family. It consists of tuned metal bars, is played by holding two or four soft mallets and striking the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a vibraharpist; the vibraphone resembles the xylophone and glockenspiel, one of the main differences between it and these instruments being that each bar is paired with a resonator tube that has a motor-driven butterfly valve at its upper end. The valves are mounted on a common shaft, which produces a vibrato effect while spinning; the vibraphone has a sustain pedal similar to that on a piano. With the pedal up, the bars produce a shortened sound. With the pedal down, they sound for several seconds; the vibraphone is used in jazz music, in which it plays a featured role and was a defining element of the sound of mid-20th-century "Tiki lounge" exotica, as popularized by Arthur Lyman. It is the second most popular solo keyboard percussion instrument in classical music, after the marimba, is part of the standard college-level percussion performance education.
It is a standard instrument in the modern percussion section for orchestras and concert bands. The first musical instrument called "vibraphone" was marketed by the Leedy Manufacturing Company in the United States in 1921. However, this instrument differed in significant details from the instrument now called the vibraphone; the Leedy vibraphone achieved a degree of popularity after it was used in the novelty recordings of "Aloha'Oe" and "Gypsy Love Song" by vaudeville performer Louis Frank Chiha. This popularity led J. C. Deagan, Inc. in 1927 to ask its Chief Tuner, Henry Schluter, to develop a similar instrument. However, Schluter didn't just copy the Leedy design, he introduced several significant improvements: making the bars from aluminium instead of steel for a more "mellow" basic tone. Schluter's design was more popular than the Leedy design, has become the template for all instruments now called vibraphone. However, when Deagan began marketing Schluter's instrument in 1928, they called it the vibraharp.
The name derived from similar aluminum bars that were mounted vertically and operated from the "harp" stop on a theatre organ. Since Deagan trademarked the name, others were obliged to use the earlier "vibraphone" for their instruments incorporating the newer design; the name confusion continues to the present, but over time vibraphone became more popular than vibraharp. By 1974, the Directory of the D. C. Federation of Musicians listed 3 vibraharp players; the initial purpose of the vibraphone was to add to the large arsenal of percussion sounds used by vaudeville orchestras for novelty effects. This use was overwhelmed in the 1930s by its development as a jazz instrument; as of 2015, it retains its use as a jazz instrument, is established as a major keyboard percussion instrument used for solos, in chamber ensembles, in modern orchestral compositions. The use of the vibraphone in jazz was pioneered by Paul Barbarin, the drummer with Luis Russell's band, his playing can be heard on recordings by Henry "Red" Allen from July 1929, Barbarin played on the first recordings by Louis Armstrong to feature the instrument – "Rockin' Chair" and "Song of the Islands".
The first classical composer to use the vibraphone in one of his pieces was Alban Berg, who used it prominently in his opera Lulu from 1937. Outside of the United States, the Premier Drum Company of London, after experimenting with a variety of aluminum bar instruments more related to the glockenspiel that were called variations of “harpaphone”, moved to the production of the Schluter vibraphone design. Bergerault, of Ligueil, France began manufacturing vibraphones in the 1930s. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, each manufacturer attracted its own following in various specialties, but the Deagan vibraphones were the models preferred by many of the emerging class of specialist jazz players. Deagan struck endorsement deals with many of the leading players, including Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson; the Deagan company went out of business in the 1980s. Yamaha continues to make percussion instruments based on Deagan designs. In 1948, the Musser Mallet Company was founded by Clair Omar Musser, a designer at Deagan.
The Musser company continues to manufacture vibraphones as part of the Ludwig Drum Company. The standard modern instrument has a range of three octaves, from the F below middle C. Larger three-and-a-half or four octave models from the C below middle C are becoming more common. Unlike its cousin the xylophone, it is a non-transposing instrument written at concert pitch. However, composers write parts to sound an octave higher. In the 1930s several manufacturers made soprano vibraphones with a range C4 to C7, notably the Ludwig & Ludwig model B110 and the Deagan model 144. Deagan made a portable model that had a 2 1⁄2 octave range and resonators made of cardboard; the major components of a vibraphone are the bars, damper mechanism and the frame. Vibraphones are played with mallets. Vibraphone bars are made from aluminum bar stock, cut into blanks of pre-de
Oceanian art
Oceanic art or Oceanian art comprises the creative works made by the native people of the Pacific Islands and Australia, including areas as far apart as Hawaii and Easter Island. It comprises the works of the two groups of people who settled the area, though during two different periods, they would in time however, come to interact and together reach more remote islands. The area is broken down into four separate regions: Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; the former two share a common ancestral culture of the Lapita, while the latter two comprise settlers of the first wave of people into the area. All of the regions in times would be affected by western influence and colonization. In more recent times, the people of Oceania have found a greater appreciation of their region's artistic heritage; the artistic creations of these people varies throughout the cultures and regions. The subject matter carries themes of fertility or the supernatural. Art such as masks were used in social rituals. Petroglyphs, painting, wood carving, stone carving and textile work are other common art forms.
Contemporary Pacific art is alive and well, encompassing traditional styles and materials, but now imagined in a diversity of contemporary forms, revealing the complexity of geographic and individual interaction and history. Art of Oceania properly encompasses the artistic traditions of the people indigenous to Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Island and Lebanon Dahia; the ancestors of the people of these islands came from Southeast Asia by two different groups at separate times. The first, an Australoid people and the ancestors of modern-day Melanesians and Australian Aboriginals, came to New Guinea and Australia about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago; the Melanesians expanded as far as the northern Solomon Islands by 38,000 BC. The second wave, from Southeast Asia, would not come for another 30,000 years, they would come to interact and together reach the most remote Pacific islands. These early peoples lacked a writing system, made works on perishable materials, so few records of them exist from this time.
It should be noted that Oceanic peoples traditionally did not see their work in the western concept of "art", but rather created objects for the practical purpose of use in religious or social ceremonies, or for use in everyday life. By 1500 BC the Lapita culture, descendants of the second wave, would begin to expand and spread into the more remote islands. At around the same time, art began to appear in New Guinea, including the earliest examples of sculpture in Oceania; the period from 1000 BC on, the Lapita people would consolidate and begin to create the contemporary Polynesian cultures of Samoa and Fiji. They would from there venture further out into the Pacific and settle the Marquesas and northern Cook Islands between 200 BC and 1 AD. Additionally from about 1000 BC, trade between the Pacific Islands and mainland Asia was growing, starting 600 BC, works of the Dongson culture of Vietnam, known for their bronze working, can be found in Oceania, their imagery has a strong influence on the indigenous artistic tradition.
Records to 1000 AD continue to be few, however most artistic tradition are continued to this point, such as New Guinea sculpture and Australian rock art, although the period is characterized by increasing trade and interaction as well as new areas being settled, including Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. Starting around 1100 AD, the people of Easter Island would begin construction of nearly 900 moai. At about 1200 AD, the people of Pohnpei, a Micronesian island, would embark on another megalithic construction, building Nan Madol, a city of artificial islands and a system of canals. By 1500, the first European explorers begin to reach Oceania. Although previous artistic and architectural traditions are continued, the various regions would begin to diverge and record more distinct cultures; the rock art of Australian Aborigines is the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. These sites, found in Arnhem Land, are divided into three periods: Pre-Estuarine and Fresh Water.
They are dated based on the styles and content of the art. Pre-Estuarine, the oldest, is characterized by imagery in a red ocher pigment. However, by about 6000 BC elaborate images begin to appear, marking the beginning of the Estuarine period; these rock paintings served several functions. Some were used in magic, others to increase animal populations for hunting, while some were for amusement. One of the more elaborate collections of rock art in this area is the site of Ubirr, a favored camping ground during wet seasons which has had its rock faces painted many times over thousands of years. Sculpture in Oceania first appears on New Guinea as a series of stone figures found throughout the island, but in mountainous highlands. Establishing a chronological timeframe for these pieces in most cases is difficult, but one has been dated to 1500 BC; the content of the sculptures fit into three categories: mortars and freestanding figures. The tops of many pestles contain images of birds or human heads.
Mortars show similar imagery, or sometimes geometric patterns. Freestanding figures again portray similar themes: humans and phalluses; the original significance of these pieces however, are unknown, but were used in the context of rituals. Another early culture with an artistic tradition are the Lapita, dating from about 1500 BC to 500 BC, who are thought to be the ancestors of the modern day cultures of Polynesia and some parts of Melanesia; the culture was form
LP record
The LP is an analog sound storage medium, a vinyl record format characterized by a speed of 33 1⁄3 rpm, a 12- or 10-inch diameter, use of the "microgroove" groove specification. Introduced by Columbia in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry. Apart from a few minor refinements and the important addition of stereophonic sound, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums. At the time the LP was introduced, nearly all phonograph records for home use were made of an abrasive shellac compound, employed a much larger groove, played at 78 revolutions per minute, limiting the playing time of a 12-inch diameter record to less than five minutes per side; the new product was a 12- or 10-inch fine-grooved disc made of PVC and played with a smaller-tipped "microgroove" stylus at a speed of 33 1⁄3 rpm. Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for about 22 minutes. Only the microgroove standard was new, as both vinyl and the 33 1⁄3 rpm speed had been used for special purposes for many years, as well as in one unsuccessful earlier attempt to introduce a long-playing record for home use by RCA Victor.
Although the LP was suited to classical music because of its extended continuous playing time, it allowed a collection of ten or more pop music recordings to be put on a single disc. Such collections, as well as longer classical music broken up into several parts, had been sold as sets of 78 rpm records in a specially imprinted "record album" consisting of individual record sleeves bound together in book form; the use of the word "album" persisted for the one-disc LP equivalent. The prototype of the LP was the soundtrack disc used by the Vitaphone motion picture sound system, developed by Western Electric and introduced in 1926. For soundtrack purposes, the less than five minutes of playing time of each side of a conventional 12-inch 78 rpm disc was not acceptable; the sound had to play continuously for at least 11 minutes, long enough to accompany a full 1,000-foot reel of 35 mm film projected at 24 frames per second. The disc diameter was increased to 16 inches and the speed was reduced to 33 1⁄3 revolutions per minute.
Unlike their smaller LP descendants, they were made with the same large "standard groove" used by 78s. Unlike conventional records, the groove started at the inside of the recorded area near the label and proceeded outward toward the edge. Like 78s, early soundtrack discs were pressed in an abrasive shellac compound and played with a single-use steel needle held in a massive electromagnetic pickup with a tracking force of five ounces. By mid-1931, all motion picture studios were recording on optical soundtracks, but sets of soundtrack discs, mastered by dubbing from the optical tracks and scaled down to 12 inches to cut costs, were made as late as 1936 for distribution to theaters still equipped with disc-only sound projectors. Syndicated radio programming was distributed on 78 rpm discs beginning in 1928; the desirability of longer continuous playing time soon led to the adoption of the Vitaphone soundtrack disc format. 16-inch 33 1⁄3 rpm discs playing about 15 minutes per side were used for most of these "electrical transcriptions" beginning about 1930.
Transcriptions were variously recorded inside out with an outside start. Longer programs, which required several disc sides, pioneered the system of recording odd-numbered sides inside-out and even-numbered sides outside-in so that the sound quality would match from the end of one side to the start of the next. Although a pair of turntables was used, to avoid any pauses for disc-flipping, the sides had to be pressed in a hybrid of manual and automatic sequencing, arranged in such a manner that no disc being played had to be turned over to play the next side in the sequence. Instead of a three-disc set having the 1–2, 3–4 and 5–6 manual sequence, or the 1–6, 2–5 and 3–4 automatic sequence for use with a drop-type mechanical record changer, broadcast sequence would couple the sides as 1–4, 2–5 and 3–6; some transcriptions were recorded with a vertically modulated "dale" groove. This was found to allow deeper bass and an extension of the high-end frequency response. Neither of these was a great advantage in practice because of the limitations of AM broadcasting.
Today we can enjoy the benefits of those higher-fidelity recordings if the original radio audiences could not. Transcription discs were pressed only in shellac, but by 1932 pressings in RCA Victor's vinyl-based "Victrolac" were appearing. Other plastics were sometimes used. By the late 1930s, vinyl was standard for nearly all kinds of pressed discs except ordinary commercial 78s, which continued to be made of shellac. Beginning in the mid-1930s, one-off 16-inch 33 1⁄3 rpm lacquer discs were used by radio networks to archive recordings of their live broadcasts, by local stations to delay the broadcast of network programming or to prerecord their own productions. In the late 1940s, magnetic tape recorders were adopted by the networks to pre-record shows or repeat them for airing in different time zones, but 16-inch vinyl pressings continued to be used into the early 1960s for non-network distribution of prerecorded programming. Use of the LP's microgroove standard began in the late 1950s, in the 1960s the discs were reduced to 12 inches, becoming physically indistinguishable from ordinary LPs.
Unless the quantity required was small, pressed discs were a more economica
