When I went to my grandfather's House he had a big bunch of records. They were mostly black and sort of shiny, and resembled a piece of plastic sewer pipe about 6" long. Most of them were black, but a couple were a really pretty blue and there was one yellow one - IIRC.

One of them that I remember listening to several times was a speech by Teddy Roosevelt about "The Right of the People to Rule."

Even when the 78s came along a lot of the records we ran into (at the used record store - couldn't afford a new one) were 16s. A couple of publishers decided that "educational materials" should be on them for a couple of reasons:

1. They could squeeze more minutes into the same disk size.

2. Since most people couldn't play them at home everybody would realize they were "special" and they could charge a whole lot more for them (after all, school boards were all rich, weren't they.?).

3. They didn't give a good crap about what they sounded like (after all, they're just for kids).

4. They could sell the schools all "industrial grade" 16 rpm players for even more profit (see #2 above).

Even much later, when the schools had "real sound equipment" a local Radio Station sent me a "courtesy copy" of a news broadcast about me and some girl from another school who had just won a somethinorother, recorded on a limp piece of blackish Saran wrap, at 16 rpm. Never did find out what they said.

John