Format Friction

The first book to consider the shellac disc as a global format. With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format of 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 as well as early colonial expeditions to capture sounds, to offer a global portrait of this format. Spun at 78 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 lens, Gavin Williams illuminates the environments plundered, the materials seized, and the ears entangled in the making of this format. Bringing together material, political, and music history, Format Friction decenters the story of a beloved medium and so too explores new ways of understanding listening in technological culture more broadly.