Come back with me to 1956 when vinyl was still new
Before Columbia Records introduced the long-playing vinyl album, records were made of a delicate and extremely fragile compound based on shellac. The use of polyvinyl chloride changed everything.
Shellac-based 78 RPM records continued to be sold for another dozen years as the industry slowly dragged people toward the new technology. Open Culture found this video that explained the vinyl-pressing process to a 1956 audience.