The Evolution of the Motorized Turntable

The speed of the motor is sort of determined to everything else. 78 RPM became the preferred format for early records and even with a 10 inch disc that meant you could store about three minutes of audio per side. It was a limit of the medium so if you wanted to sell a lot of records and have people go gaga over your music you really wanted it to be high quality stuff. So how did the music industry settle on the standard speeds? Well 78 RPM is very convenient when you start looking at things like gear ratios.