In-Car Record Player
In car entertainment has come a long way since I started driving when an eight-track cartridge was the bee’s knees. Now we have the delights of DAB radio and the ability to stream music via our phone through the vehicle’s sound system. But how did the idea of an in-car audio system begin?
In the 1950s vinyl records were the only medium around for transmitting recorded sounds. Peter Goldmark’s first contribution to the development of audio was by playing a role in the development of the microgroove 33 1/3 rpm phonographic disc, what we now know as the vinyl record, during his time at CBS Labs. He then developed an in-car record player introduced by Chrysler in 1956 under the guise of the Highway Hi-Fi.
The technology used was different from that deployed in a normal record player. It was designed to play at half the speed of a normal LP record and the discs had twice as many grooves. This allowed them to store an hour’s worth o music on each side, two hours’ worth of music in total, compared with the forty-five minutes in all that could be crammed on to a conventional LP. The larger capacity made it ideal for use in a car, reducing the frequency of having to change sides, a manoeuvre fraught with difficulties for the driver or requiring a halt in the journey.
The player, offered as an optional extra for various Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge, and Imperial models, came at a price, $200 or the equivalent of about 10% of the purchase price. And there were some significant drawbacks. As ordinary LPs would not play on the record deck, buyers were restricted to listening to music on special vinyl records made exclusively by Columbia Records for Chrysler and, of course, they only featured Columbia’s recording stars, a roster that did not include the by then favourites like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard.
The players were not very reliable, either, and if they broke down, they had to be returned to a Chrysler dealer as the technology was beyond the ken of a local garage to fix. Moreover, as the player’s tone arm was designed to apply a heavier tracking force in an attempt to minimize skipping and jumping while on the move, although it still happened frequently, it meant that the grooves were worn down quickly, rendering the record unplayable after just a few spins.
Within a year Chrysler slowly pulled support for the technology because of the high warranty service costs and complaints about the limited number of available titles and in 1958 the Highway Hi-Fi was discontinued. That was not the end of the in-car record player, though.
In 1960 RCA, another record label, manufactured its own record player, which it offered to several car manufacturers. Its problem was that it could only play seven-inch LPs, which could not store very much music and required constant stops to change the disc over, an irritating and unnecessary hold up in any journey. It proved to be a bigger flop that the Highway Hi-Fi and was discontinued in 1961.
There was always the radio, of course, but for those who yearned to hear their own selection of music, a welcome and more robust solution was just around the corner. In August 1963 the compact tape cassette was invented by Lou Ottens and his team at Philips and it soon became the standard for in-car audio systems.
