The reason we call our records “albums” goes back a long time to the early days of records. This fine example of Gilbert and Sullivan “the Gondoliers” illustrates why.
This recording was supervised by Rupert D’oyly Carte, no less. It is recorded at 78 rpm on 12 inch records. You can only get four or five minutes onto a side of such a record. That’s plenty for me, but If you can handle 2 hours of Gilbert and Sullivan without reaching for the kitchen knife, then there was a solution.
Prior to 1948, when the 12 inch microgroove 33 rpm LP was invented, the only way to get long play time was to have lots of records. Here we have 12. At 8 to 10 minutes per record that’s about 2 hours. It is a credit to their popularity that people were willing to sit through this and change records ever five minutes.
To package this lot the record company produced these books, or Albums, to safely store the many records which made up the full composition. When the LP took over in the 50’s the term Album was still used, though now it referred to just one record in a cardboard sleeve. Double and triple Albums came shortly after.
This album is from “His masters voice” which still lives on as HMV and uses the logo of nipper the dog.