Dual anniversary today; one for Otis Redding, and the other for Peter Goldmark

[mahatmakanejeeves]

http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/

1967, Otis Redding went into the studio to record '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay'. The song went on to be his biggest hit. Redding didn't see its release; he was killed three days later in a plane crash. Redding wrote the first verse of the song, under the abbreviated title 'Dock of the Bay', on a houseboat at Waldo Point in Sausalito, California a short time after his appearance at The Monterey pop festival. Redding's familiar whistling, heard before the song's fade was the singer fooling around, he had intended to return to the studio at a later date to add words in place of the whistling.

Otis Ray Redding Jr. (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, arranger, and talent scout. He is considered one of the greatest singers in the history of American popular music and a seminal artist in soul music and rhythm and blues. Redding's style of singing gained inspiration from the gospel music that preceded the genre. His singing style influenced many other soul artists of the 1960s, such as James Carr and Freddie Jackson. (Woodstra and Elewine) During his lifetime, his recordings were produced by Stax Records, based in Memphis, Tennessee.

It's not my favorite Otis Redding song, but this is its day, so:

1977, Inventor Dr Peter Carl Goldmark was killed in a car crash aged 71. Goldmark invented the long-playing microgroove record in 1945 that went on to revolutionise the way people listened to music.

Peter Carl Goldmark (Hungarian: Goldmark Péter Károly) (December 2, 1906 – December 7, 1977) was a German-Hungarian engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 33-1/3 rpm phonograph disc, the standard for incorporating multiple or lengthy recorded works on a single disc for two generations. The LP was introduced by Columbia's Goddard Lieberson in 1948. Lieberson was later president of Columbia Records from 1956–71 and 1973–75.
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Work

In addition to his work on the LP record, Goldmark developed field-sequential color technology for color television while at CBS. The system, first demonstrated on August 29, 1940, and shown to the press on September 3 used a rapidly rotating color wheel that alternated transmission in red, green and blue. The system transmitted on 343 lines, about 100 less than a black and white set, and at a different field scan rate, and thus was incompatible with television sets currently on the market without an adapter.

Although CBS did broadcast in color with the Goldmark system in 1950–1951, the "compatible color" technology developed for RCA and NBC (by a team led by Richard Kell, George H. Brown and others) was compatible with existing black and white TVs. Goldmark and others have pointed out that the CBS color wheel system did provide better picture quality (although lower image resolution) than RCA's system, but the compatibility problem proved its downfall. An improved RCA/NBC color system submitted in July 1953 became the industry standard chosen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in December 1953. Ironically, cameras using the color wheel system continued to be used for scientific research for several more decades, including the color lunar surface TV cameras during all the 1970s NASA Apollo moon landings. Goldmark also continued his work in developing new LP-related technologies, such as the Highway Hi-Fi, a system designed to play 7-inch LP records in automobiles.

After the success of the LP record, Goldmark spent the next two decades at CBS Laboratories working on various inventions, chief of which was EVR, the Electronic Video Recorder. This futuristic home video playback device used reels of film stored in plastic cassettes to electronically store audio and video signals, and was first announced in 1967. A B&W prototype was demonstrated in 1969 (promising color playback in future models), but the invention floundered when it proved to be difficult and costly to manufacture. CBS was also concerned about the potential of competition from home video devices, particularly those that could record — a fear that eventually proved prescient. As with color television, Goldmark's EVR film-based system was superseded by another technology, in this case Sony's U-Matic 3/4" videocassette format in late 1971, since the cassette tape format was cheaper and more effective. However, Goldmark's vinyl long-playing records remained the standard in the music industry until the CD replaced the LP in the late 1980s.

LP record

The LP (from "long playing" or "long play" ) is an analog sound storage medium, a vinyl record format characterized by a speed of  33 1⁄3 rpm, a 12- or 10-inch (30 or 25 cm) diameter, and use of the "microgroove" groove specification. Introduced by Columbia in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry. Apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.
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Columbia

CBS Laboratories head research scientist Peter Goldmark led Columbia's team to develop a phonograph record that would hold at least 20 minutes per side. The team included Howard H. Scott, who died September 22, 2012, at the age of 92.

Research began in 1941, was suspended during World War II, and then resumed in 1945. Columbia Records unveiled the LP at a press conference in the Waldorf Astoria on June 18, 1948, in two formats: 10 inches (25 centimetres) in diameter, matching that of 78 rpm singles, and 12 inches (30 centimetres) in diameter. The initial release of 133 recordings were: 85 12-inch classical LPs (ML4001 to 4085), 26 10-inch classics (ML2001 to 2026), eighteen 10-inch popular numbers (CL6001 to 6018) and four 10-inch juvenile records (JL 8001 to 8004). According to the 1949 Columbia catalog, issued September 1948, the first twelve-inch LP was Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor by Nathan Milstein on the violin with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter (ML 4001). Three ten-inch series were released: 'popular', starting with the reissue of The Voice of Frank Sinatra (CL 6001); 'classical', numbering from Beethoven's 8th symphony (ML 2001), and 'juvenile', commencing with Nursery Songs by Gene Kelly (JL 8001). Also released at this time were a pair of 2-LP sets, Puccini's La Bohème, SL-1 and Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel, SL-2.

His son has quite a few accomplishments on his own:

Peter C. Goldmark, Jr. is a retired publisher and journalist who highlighted environmental and social issues. Goldmark retired in 2010 as director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s climate and air program. He was previously the chairman and CEO of the International Herald Tribune, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the budget director for the State of New York. He is noted for being an advocate for social causes and environmental issues in many of his assignments. He was responsible for management of multi-billion-dollar budgets in some of his posts.