Peter Carl Goldmark

• Born: December 2, 1906
• Birthplace: Budapest, Hungary
• Died: December 7, 1977
• Place of death: Rye, New York

Hungarian American engineer

Goldmark invented the long-playing phonographic record, which revolutionized recorded sound and dominated the music industry for four decades. He also produced a system for transmitting and receiving color-television images and contributed to the development of audiocassettes and videocassettes.

Primary fields: Communications; electronics and electrical engineering; physics

Primary inventions: Long-playing (LP) record; color television

Early Life

Peter Carl Goldmark was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1906, the eldest child of Alexander Goldmark and Emma Steiner. His father was a businessman, and his great-uncle, Joseph Goldmark, was a chemist and inventor. Young Peter grew up in a musical household and was influenced by his musical mother and another great-uncle, Karl Goldmark, who was one of Hungary’s greatest classical composers. Peter learned the piano and cello as a child, and his interest in music undoubtedly influenced his later work with sound recording. He was also fascinated by machines and science.

After his parents divorced when he was eight years old, Peter and his mother moved to Vienna, where he set up a home laboratory in the bathroom. He built a radio telegraph receiver and developed an interest in contemporary devices that were used for showing motion pictures. During this period, he also applied for his first patent for an invention that allowed an automobile driver to activate a horn with his knee.

In 1925, Goldmark attended the University of Vienna to study physics. A year later, he obtained a primitive televison kit from Scottish engineer John Logie Baird, who is generally credited as being the first person to successfully transmit a television image (in 1925). Goldmark modified and enlarged the small screen, which had been about the size of a postage stamp, and became intensely interested in television electronics.

After graduating with a Ph.D. in 1931, Goldmark began working as a television engineer for Pye Radio in Cambridge, England. A few years later, he moved to the United States, and in 1936 he became the chief engineer for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in New York. He became a U.S. citizen the following year. At CBS, Goldmark was instrumental in developing a television department for the company, and he went on to revolutionize the recording industry with the invention of vinyl phonographic records.

Life’s Work

Throughout his career, Goldmark was awarded numerous patents for his inventions. During World War II, he developed electronic jammers that were used by pilots to disrupt enemy radar, and his devices were used during the Allied invasion of Normandy.

During a trip to Montreal in 1940, Goldmark saw a screening of Gone with the Wind (1939), one of the first motion pictures filmed in color. He was impressed with the Technicolor format of the movie. At the time, television was in its early stages, and pictures were still broadcast in black and white. Goldmark became determined to develop a method to colorize TV images. Within months, he had developed his field-sequential system, which was demonstrated for the first time in New York in the summer of that year. The method used a rotating disk of three color filters (red, blue, and green), which were placed in front of the camera and synchronized with a similar disc in the TV set. The result was a sharp, colorized image. Unfortunately, Goldmark’s method was not compatible with the millions of existing black-and-white televisions and would have required consumers to purchase new TV sets.

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) also developed a method to transmit color images that was compatible with existing black-and-white TV sets. Although image quality was inferior to Goldmark’s, the RCA method was eventually approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and became the industry standard when color television was introduced in the United States in 1951. Due to the outstanding quality of Goldmark’s system, it was still used for medical and educational applications that required closed-circuit television. Years later, Goldmark’s lightweight system was used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to broadcast color images during the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

Goldmark’s most important invention originated from his interest in music. During a casual evening at a friend’s home in the fall of 1945, his dinner host played a recording of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto. Six records were required to play the fifty-minute piece, and the frequent interruptions to the music by changing and flipping the records irritated Goldmark. These early records spun on a turntable at 78 revolutions per minute (rpm) and relied on a steel needle to trace the record grooves to produce sound. Each time a record was played, however, both the needle and the brittle shellac discs became worn and damaged, making the already poor sound quality even worse. Goldmark immediately began a quest to find a replacement for these discs and improve sound recording technology.

After working on the project for three years, Goldmark produced a record with much thinner microgrooves. He increased the width of the record by several inches (to twelve inches) and slowed the revolution speed to 33 1/3 rpm. This increased playing time to over twenty minutes for each side, allowing for most popular classical works to fit on one disc. The new records were made of lightweight vinyl and were virtually indestructible. He also replaced the old steel needles with sapphire, extending the lifetime of the record and needle considerably, and made improvements to the recording microphone to produce a clearer and cleaner sound.

The first long-playing record was demonstrated in 1948 and featured Goldmark playing the cello accompanied by other CBS employees playing other instruments. Although LPs were not an immediate commercial success, the popularity of the Broadway hit musical South Pacific (1949) boosted LP sales enormously. Longtime competitor RCA quickly marketed 45 rpm “singles” for individual popular songs, but the LP dominated the music industry for forty years until it was displaced by the compact disc in the 1980’s.

During his years at CBS, Goldmark was promoted several times and eventually became president of the CBS Laboratories. While at CBS, he worked on developing a new audio system that could be played in automobiles. Chrysler models (1956-1959) used the system that was called Highway Hi-Fi. It was installed below the car’s instrument panel in a shock-proof case and used special seven-inch discs with ultramicrogrooves. Because the devices were prone to malfunction, the concept was not pursued by CBS, which also feared that drivers would spend less time listening to CBS radio stations while driving. The idea eventually led another company (Philips) to develop audiocassettes that used magnetic tape to store sound and cassette decks that could be easily installed in automobiles. Goldmark also aspired to create a system for recording both sound and pictures on tape; his Electronic Video Recording system eventually evolved into the videocassette that was developed by Sony in 1971.

Goldmark left CBS in 1971 to form his own company, Goldmark Communications Corporation, in Stamford, Connecticut. While he continued to be involved in researching new communication technologies (for example, satellites and cable television), he devoted more time to humanitarian issues, promoting education, and using technology to increase peoples’ quality of life. In 1977, the same year he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Jimmy Carter, Goldmark was killed in an automobile accident in Westchester County, New York.

Impact

Goldmark produced more than 150 inventions, many of which had an influence on society and improved the quality of life for humanity. His technology-based communications products were both functional and fun, improving leisure activities. His discoveries in the areas of electronics and communications were especially significant in expanding the entertainment industry and advancing education.

By providing thousands of artists with the means to record their songs, Goldmark’s long-playing records became a worldwide industry and popular form of entertainment. Compared to early records, his lightweight, vinyl discs reduced shipping and storage costs, resulting in huge savings for consumers, producers, and retailers. By the 1970’s, annual sales of LP records in the United States were over a quarter million. LP records had an enormous impact on the economy, creating many jobs and opportunities for people in the entertainment and arts industries.

From the mid-1950’s and beyond, record players or stereos were purchased by millions of families and, together with televison sets, introduced the electronics revolution to consumers around the world.

Bibliography

Fisher, David E., and Marshall J. Fisher. “The Color War.” American Heritage of Invention and Technology 12 (Winter, 1997): 8-18. Looks at the battle between CBS and RCA, including Goldmark’s role, to establish a standard for commercial color-television broadcasts.

Goldmark, Peter C., and Lee Edson. Maverick Inventor: My Turbulent Years at CBS. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973. An interesting personal account of Goldmark’s discoveries during his years working at CBS. He describes how company executives too frequently failed to take advantage of his ideas to develop new technology (such as his audio system for automobiles and a video recording system).

Morton, David. Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. A look at the one-hundred-year history of sound recording.

Walsh, Ulysses. “The Development of the Long-Playing Record.” American Record Guide (September, 1948): 6. American Record Guide is the oldest classical music review magazine in the United States. This article gives a good account of the development of the LP record and Goldmark’s role.

Wullfson, Don L. The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle: And Other Surprising Stories About Inventions. New York: Cobblehill Books/Dutton, 1997. A book for young people that describes the stories behind more than one hundred inventions, including the LP record.