Format Friction by Gavin Williams PAPERBACK 9780226833262

The University of Chicago Press

Format FrictionPerspectives on the Shellac Disc\nAuthor(s): Gavin Williams\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: The University of Chicago Press, United States\nImprint: University of Chicago Press\nISBN-13: 9780226833262, 978-0226833262\nSynopsis\nThe first book to consider the shellac disc as a global format.\n\n With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the twentieth century. Format Friction brings together a set of local encounters with the shellac disc, beginning with its preconditions in South Asian knowledge and labor, to offer a global portrait of this format.\n\n Spun at seventy-eight revolutions per minute, the shellac disc rapidly became an industrial standard even while the gramophone itself remained a novelty. The very basis of this early sound reproduction technology was friction, an elemental materiality of sound shaped through cultural practice. Using friction as a len.