In April 1948, Columbia invited Samoff [David Samoff, president of RCA] to hear its still-secret new disc. What happened at that meeting is clearly in dispute. More than one account has Samoff praising Columbia's accomplishment, but that's not how Samoff remembered it. In his version, which he related from the stand in D.C., he responded by telling Paley [William Paley, president of CBS] that RCA had developed its own microgroove technology, a 7-inch 45 rpm disc that was superior to the LP. "It's the coming system of recording," he recalled saying. A few months later, Columbia officially announced that LPs would soon go on sale. The company offered the LP technology royalty-free to any company that wanted to use it. To Columbia's surprise, RCA Victor did not announce plans to release LPs or to make LP-compatible phonographs, something other companies were beginning to do.

RCA finally went public with the 7-inch 45 shortly after the New Year, announcing that 45s would go on sale in the spring. Though the 45 held no more music than a 78, RCA touted it as beating the LP at its own game. RCA had designed a special record changer that could hold eight stacked 45s, with as little as one second elapsing between one disc ending and the needle dropping on the next. That meant 32 minutes of almost uninterrupted music. Columbia was unimpressed. "We are unable to fathom the purpose of the records revolving at 45 rpm," Wallerstein said [Edward Wallerstein, president of Columbia]. But there was a purpose. The 45 sounded better, in the estimation of RCA. That was debatable, of course, but RCA did have recording science on its side. The faster a disc spins (or a reel of tape turns), the higher the maximum frequency it can reproduce because the system has more room to "draw" each moment of music. RCA was confident that the public would forsake LPs once they heard the great sound of 45s. That's why RCA was so incensed by Columbia's immediate reaction to RCA's announcement, which was to say that they, too, would soon market 7-inch microgroove discs—except that, oh yeah, they'd spin at 33?, not 45. That defeated the whole purpose of the 45! 'We told Columbia then, and we have reaffirmed since, and we have demonstrated, that you cannot give the same kind of recording on a small 33, 7-inch record that you can on a 45," Samoff said during his story. Once 45s went on sale in 1949, the Battle of the Speeds was on. It would be "a historic disk battle between the Camden characters and the Columbia gang from Bridgeport," the amusement-industry trade magazine The Billboard proclaimed. In many respects the tussle is likely to turn out as fraught with significance as the old battle between the cylinder and the flat disc." They got that right. Columbia went on the offensive. Wallerstein slammed RCA for making "no provisions of any kind, either in its equipment or records, for long-playing records," and for issuing its own "unorthodox" record that required its own fancy-ass turntable. Columbia knew, however, that without the support of RCA, the LP would have a difficult time reaching dominance. In the summer of 1949, the two companies—along with Decca Records, the third-largest record label—convened a summit to discuss a peaceful resolution to the speed battle. Talks quickly broke down, with RCA accusing Columbia of conducting a clandestine campaign to sink the 45. "R.P.M. Peace Plan Flops," The Billboard announced, "Each Company on Its Own." Although some labels did announce plans to make 45s, the LP clearly had the momentum. During the last days of 1949, RCA finally announced it would release some titles on LP—but only to satisfy a "vociferous minority" of the label's customers. As for Columbia. "we have no plans for going 45," Rosenman said during the same week he grilled Samoff. Sarnoff was undeterred. The 45 was "the greatest development in recording the world has produced so far," he said, adding that it was only a matter of time before Columbia began making 45s. After Samoff's testimony, the panel called a recess. Reporters found Goldmark in the crowd and asked him if Sarnoffs account of his meeting with Paley was accurate. Goldmark, who had been at that meeting, remembered it quite differently. He recalled Sarnoff saying, "You caught me with my pants down?

In many retellings of the Battle of the Speeds, it is RCA and Columbia that are caught with their pants down, all the better to shove their heads up their asses while their intra-corporate shenanigans nearly bring down an industry. There is some truth to that. Record sales during the third quarter of 1948. when the first LPs hit stores, were down 42 percent from the same period in 1947. A 1949 survey found that only 15 percent of the nation's phonograph owners purchased records with any regularity. One retailer described the mood of his customers, unsure as to which formats and players they were supposed to buy, as "plain disgusted." On the other hand, the speed war coincided with the country's first post-war recession, and many major industries were experiencing declines. And although record sales were down, 12 million phonographs were sold between 1946 and 1949, creating what The Billboard called "the biggest potential disk market in history." The 85 percent of the market that was not regularly buying records was clearly waiting for a good reason to do so. The public's disgust notwithstanding. the millions that RCA and Columbia spent promoting microgroove formats may have piqued its interest. Record sales were fairly strong during the 1949 holiday season. The Billboard theorized that "the so-called 'battle of the speeds,' accused of causing industrial chaos, has bred a general public understanding of the developments in the industry." As The Billboard predicted, the speed wars did recall the heady days of Edison's cylinder versus Berliner's disc. Samoff, like Edison, believed the public would make certain sacrifices for superior sound, choosing a disc that held just four minutes because it sounded better than the one that held twenty-two minutes.

On the merits, Samoff was probably correct. Even today, a well-made 45 rpm vinyl disc sounds noticeably better than its 33? counterpart. But it didn't matter. The New York Times critic Howard Taubman spoke for many record buyers in 1950 when he admitted that although many 45s were aurally superior, he preferred LPs for their "sheer listening comfort and continuity of performances." Even the fact that the 45 survived gave the lie to Sarnoff's belief in the car of the marketplace. His format turned out to be perfect for the song-driven pop market, whereas the classical audience, which generally cared much more about quality audio, embraced the LP. Perhaps the biggest evidence that the speed war ultimately galvanized consumers is that as soon as it ended, interest in "high fidelity" exploded. Although the original high-fidelity movement is often remembered today as primarily the purview of Playboy-reading, pipe-smoking, Eames chair—owning bachelors, it was firmly entrenched in the mainstream. On this point, both High Fidelity, the magazine that chronicled the movement ("a major cultural phenomenon"), and Life ("a major American enthusiasm") could agree. What high fidelity actually meant was unclear. By 1949, it referred generally to high-end audio equipment, usually made (at first) by smaller companies, and sold as individual components. Soon enough, high fidelity meant whatever you wanted it to mean. Predicting that the ranks of the 1 million Americans who had "gone hi-fi" so far were increasing at the rate of 3,000 per week, The New Yorker reported, "So assiduously has the term 'high fidelity' been plugged and so widespread has been its acceptance. that it has been appropriated by makers of shirts, lipsticks, perfumes, candy, and other singularly unrelated commodities."

Greg Milner
Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music