Records, vinyl, LPs. These are all words that describe the same thing. But this wasn't always the case. LPs, for example, didn't enter the lexicon until 1948. And before vinyl, there were only shellac records.

The First Vinyl Record Ever Made The first commercial vinyl record available for the public was created in 1930 by RCA Victor, and it was marketed as a disc for program transcriptions. At the time, these products were truly revolutionary, and they could function at 33⅓ rotations per minute.

The materials of which discs were made and with which they were coated were also various; shellac eventually became the commonest material. Generally 78s are made of a brittle material which uses a shellac resin (thus their other name is shellac records).

PVC (polyvinyl chloride), the material that vinyl records are made of, is clear in its natural form, allowing records to be manufactured in just about any color imaginable. Despite this endless array of choices, black is still overwhelmingly the most common option, leaving the burning question: why?