Unusual types of gramophone records Hi-Fi was a system of proprietary records and players designed for use in automobiles, utilizing a slower play speed and high stylus pressure. With their origin stretching back to the dawn of recorded sound at the turn of the 20th century, flexible recording media have been made from a variety of materials including foil, paper, and–in the 1950s–thin flexible vinyl known as flexi discs. Thin, flexible paper-based records were briefly popularized in the 1930s by Hit of the Week Records and Durium Records. "Melody Cards" were popular in the late 1950s. They took the form of an oversized rectangular postcard
Spelling of disc in British English. The earlier word is "disk", which came into the English language in the middle of the 17th century. In the 19th century, "disk" became the conventional spelling for audio recordings made on a flat plate, such as the gramophone record. Early BBC technicians differentiated between "disks" (in-house transcription records) and "discs" (the colloquial term for commercial gramophone records, or what the BBC dubbed CGRs). By the 20th century, the "k" spelling was more popular in the United States, while the "c" variant was preferred in the UK. In the 1950s, when the American company IBM pioneered the