I copied this quote from LarryJ's "Another Slice of Wry."
"In 1961, regular FM stereo broadcasting began in the United States."
About 1949, or so, my folks purchased a large console record player that had one 12 or 15 inch speaker, a 78rpm record player, and a radio. It was made of real wood and was literally a piece of furniture. It had either a Firestone or a Philco brand. It was purchased from the local uptown Firestone store.
The 78 rpm records were made of shellac and would break into a thousand pieces if dropped from around waist high. We did not have very many but I recall listening to them over and over at about three minutes per side. Unknown to any of us, 45s and 33s made of vinyl were in pre-introduction and it would not be long before our record player was totally obsolete.
The radio was AM/FM. I can recall laying in front of this console listening to the Mutual Broadcasting System's "Game of the Day" during each summer from school. Well, except for one memorable summer when I discovered what girls were all about.
What was confusing to me was that I did not know what FM was and neither did anyone else. Every so often I would tune to the FM and try to bring in a station. There was nothing. This occurred for several years. Then in high school I learned that the US was going through a period where it was trying to adopt or readopt FM standards.
As it turned out, I never got to listen to FM on that radio. It was replaced with another console with AM/FM, TV, a 16, 45, 78, and 33 rpm record player with two speakers for stereo.
My parents had a Philco player that played the 33's. It was the kind that if you were in cement, the base would shock you! After the player quit :-[ would take the records and melt them over a jar in the oven to make candy dishes.
I am sick to think I now have a USB player that will play them!!! :-[ :'(
Ready
ON cement, not in! jeeeshhhh
Ours was a Philco. too. When my father was working on developing synthetic rubber for the war effort for Hercules, his best friend and coworker Ed Naudain was working on developing less breakable records, eventually coming up with what was close to what records were commonly made of for many years. Sometimes Daddy would bring home test pressings which were really fun to play. Some were terrible and others were really good.