This fascinating instruction manual dates from April 1930, a year before the merger with The Gramophone Company to form EMI, in 1931.

Little comment is required except to say that such expeditions were just that. Imagine transporting heavy recording equipment together with a large supply of equally heavy wax blanks to say 1930s Cairo. With the most unreliable of electricity supplies, lack of back-up support if machinery malfunctioned, we really cannot imagine what it was like. And yet these intrepid engineers recorded thousands of 'local' sides in what still today is very good sound.

Ave atque vale.

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