Peter Carl Goldmark

Peter Carl Goldmark
Born	December 2, 1906
Died	December 7, 1977
Nationality	Hungary
Occupation	Engineer
Engineering career
Institutions	Columbia Records
Projects	long-playing (LP)

Peter Carl Goldmark (Hungarian: Goldmark Péter Károly) (December 2, 1906 – December 7, 1977) was a Hungarian-born, American engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing (LP) microgroove 33-1/3 rpm vinyl phonograph discs which defined home audio for two generations. Goldmark's LP records were introduced by Goddard Lieberson (April 5, 1911 – May 29, 1977), who later became president of Columbia Records from 1956 – 71 and 1973 – 75.

Goldmark had gotten his first exposure to television in 1926 while in graduate school in Vienna. He later hoped to work with John Logie Baird but was turned down for a job after meeting Baird for lunch in London. In 1936, Goldmark joined CBS Laboratories, and one year later he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In addition to developing the technology for the 33-1/3/RPM record (introduced by Columbia in 1948), Goldmark developed a technology for color television while at CBS. The system, first demonstrated on August 29, 1940, and shown to the press on September 3rd used a rapidly rotating color wheel that alternated transmission in red, green and blue. The system transmitted on 343 lines, about 100 less than a black and white set, and thus was incompatible with most television sets on the market. .

Although CBS did broadcast in color with the Goldmark system in 1951, the technology developed for RCA and NBC (by a team led by Richard Kell, George H. Brown and others) was compatible with existing black and white TVs, and became the industry standard chosen by the FCC in 1953.

After basking in the success of the LP record, Goldmark spent the next two decades at CBS Laboratories working on various inventions, chief of which was EVR, the Electronic Video Recorder. This futuristic home video playback device used reels of film stored in plastic cassettes to electronically store audio and video signals, and was first announced in 1967. A B&W prototype was demonstrated in 1969 (promising color playback in future models), but the invention floundered when it proved to be difficult and costly to manufacture. CBS was also concerned about the potential of competition from home video devices, a fear that eventually proved prescient. As with color television, Goldmark's invention for videotape recording was superseded by other technology, in this case Sony's U-Matic 3/4" videocassette format in late 1971, since the cassette format was cheaper and more effective. However, Goldmark's vinyl long-playing records remained the standard in the music industry until the CD replaced the LP in the 1980s.

On November 22, 1977, President Jimmy Carter presented him the National Medal of Science "For contributions to the development of the communication sciences for education, entertainment, culture and human service."

Sources

• Coleman, Mark (2005) PLAYBACK: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines and Money, Published by Da Capo Press (ISBN 0-306-81390-4)
• Fisher and Fisher, "The Color War", Inventionand Technology, Winter 1997
• Goldmark, Peter (1973) "Maverick Inventor: My Turbulent Years at CBS", published by Saturday Review Press (ISBN 0841500460)
• Reitan, Jr., Edward Howrd, "Ed Reitan's Color Television History," http://novia.net/~ereitan/, retrieved July 1, 2007.