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
Unusual types of gramophone records 10 cm or 2.75 and 4 inches) make them unplayable on turntables with automatic return tonearms. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1960s, bootleg copies of banned Western music were individually recorded onto used medical x-ray film and sold on the black market. These were called "ribs" or 'Roentgenizdat'. The first discs by Berliner Gramophone were black, and that has been the standard color for gramophone records in times subsequent. As early as 1899, the Vitaphone Talking Machine Co. made records that were brownish-red in color. The American Record Company produced records made of blue shellac for their