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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

And as I said, the record company itself didn't want any part of it. It was done to them, not with them. Once it became successful, of course they wrapped their arms around it. Then I replaced Wallerstein with another man. Wallerstein was well up in years. But he was unbending and, as I indicated earlier, just couldn't believe that there was any way to do this besides the way he was then doing it.

We, on the other hand, didn't have the players to play the long-playing record. We only had the records. RCA had the Victor Talking Machine Company, which made the players as well as made the records. I had to persuade [David] Sarnoff to consider making records, because I didn't want to go out--well, I was willing to go out, but I would have preferred to have gone out with one of the manufacturers making the records as well--if for no other reason than the fact that they would start making the players.

We had developed the long-playing record without many people knowing we were doing it. It was done on the twelfth floor, I think--or so--of the 485 Madison Avenue, in a very small laboratory that we had given Peter Goldmark to work on ideas having to do with television. It wasn't a laboratory; it was just really one floor of that rather small building.

There were no locks on the doors or anything else. If anybody had walked in, I expect they could have seen what was going on. But nobody knew that we were working on this long- playing record, and, in fact, Paley was very skeptical about even spending any money. I had put in the budget a figure for the corporate expense on developing it, and I know he thought it was perhaps a wasted effort.





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