Science: Phonograph Reading

The Marconi Co. of London last week announced a new creation by Captain Round, one of its engineer-employes. It was a benefit to blindness—a process by which a full-length novel can be recorded on six double-faced, twelve-inch phonograph records. Each record “reads aloud” some 5,000 words, lasting 40 minutes. The blind audience can “turn back” should it drop off to sleep during a dull chapter, or should the reading go too swiftly during a delectable passage.

Captain Round’s process provides for reading at normal speed. The Round records have three or four times the usual number of grooves of a twelve-inch record and rotate a third as fast.*

* The longest-playing U. S. records, announced last autumn by Thomas Alva Edison, have 450 grooves to the inch; play 40 minutes (TIME, Oct. 4).