Archives are not just about paper, and for me recently, they’ve been all about records. By records, I mean audio recordings popularly known as “gramophone records”, “78s” or even “vinyl”.
We have recently catalogued Winston’s record collection – literally, those discs he kept in his wooden cabinet at Chartwell, the family home. And they are not just his favourite musical pieces, though these are interesting in themselves, but quite a large collection of “instantaneous recordings” of his own voice.
Briefly, these type of recordings (also known as lacquer discs or “acetates”) were used quite extensively through the 30s and 40s and into the early 50s as a means of making instant recordings, eventually superseded by tape recordings.
What is exciting about these is that many are likely to be the only copies ever made or certainly now in existence. They are often copies for or from radio broadcasts, or made during some of his less well known speeches.
Image: WCHL 12/24/20, copyright Churchill College.
This one, for example, seems to have been taken during his speech at Biggin Hill Airfield. Belding & Bennett were a commercial recording company (one of many) who would come out with equipment and blank discs to make recordings for people, on site. We have yet to hear what was said here, as the next stage of this project – digitisation – is yet to come.
One or two of the discs had stumped me in terms of identifying whether they were lacquer (or shellac or vinyl). We were fortunate to have Peter Martland, an expert on historic sound recordings, come and look at some of these. He was intrigued by this one in particular (WCHL 12/24/3).
Image: WCHL 12/24/3, copyright Churchill College.
This is an unusual instantaneous recording in that it is not a lacquer disc but something called an “RCA pre-grooved disk” made of some kind of soft plastic which was literally pre-grooved and the undulations representing the sound recordings were embossed by the recording system so that they were added to the grooves. They were introduced in 1930 and phased out by around 1934, so they are quite rare in themselves. The sound quality is not expected to be good …
Lacquer discs are notoriously fragile as the lacquer layer (cellulose nitrate) is soft and deteriorates relatively quickly, ultimately fracturing and flaking away from the core which is usually aluminium. It is timely that we are undertaking this project.
We have already started the conservation of these, which mainly involves the cleaning of the discs using deionised water and a surfactant. More on this later! This is an essential task before allowing a stylus into the soft grooves of these precious discs.
Sarah Lewery, Conservator
Hello,
I have a boxed set of all the speeches both written and recorded onto 78′s can’t recall the title, but will look it out.
Would you be interested in them?
Phil
Dear Phil
Thanks for getting in touch: we do have several different sets of Churchill speeches on record (including a 7 volume set called “The Progress of the War” and another 11 volume set, both in our Additional Churchill collection, http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FWCHL), but it would be interesting to know if yours are the same.
Katharine
Utterly fascinating,
is anyone making a radio feature yet on this material?
Cheers
Mark Burman
Producer
Dear Mark
No, as far as we know, they’ve hardly been used at all (and up until a year ago, were sitting in Churchill’s old record cabinet, as they had done for the last forty years).
Katharine
Hello,
I have Churchill’s lunch speech to officers 18/6/51 at Biggin Hill (2 78′s – 4 sides) Belding and Bennett. It is almost identical to the copy you show in the photo above. So, there is at least one other copy in existence! We also have a collection of photographs which look to be Press Agency. Some include an event on 14/10/46 when Churchill was presented Kippington Court for the British Legion. We have these from our family archives, as my father in law was present at some of the events. Please contact me if these would be of interest, Maxine
Dear Maxine
Thank you so much for getting in touch: we know very little about the Biggin Hill speech, so it’s really interesting to know that there was at least one other copy besides the one presented to Churchill – was your father in law one of the officers there? And your photos sound interesting too – we do have one photo of Churchill opening a Churchill Court at the British Legion home in Sevenoaks, but that’s 12 October 1946, so yours probably come from a different event.
Katharine