Charles Hippisley-Cox writes

Here’s one of the latest additions to the British Dance Band Collection held here at Heritage Quay.   It is an exceptionally rare example of a World Record from the early 1920s.   Unlike most of the collection wherethe records revolve at 78 r.p.m, World Records experimented with a system where the record starts slowly and gradually accelerates towards the record label. 

The theory was to reduce the deterioration of sound quality towards the centre of disc recordings where each rotation is shorter.  For various reasons the “World” project was doomed with the eccentric polymath aviator, publisher, Member of Parliament and entrepreneur-inventor Noel Pemberton Billing (1881–1948) swiftly moving on to other things .

However the system of “constant linear speed” was revisited much later with the introduction of CDs that revolve at a much faster speed when the laser gets close to the centre.The new acquisition will be difficult to transfer to an accessible MP3 as the team are still working out a way of using computer software for editing the sound files which will be recorded at a constant speed and then adjusted accordingly.