Paid $114.45 total including shipping March 2025
The discs are translucent. If you hold them up to the light, you can see through them. King Solomon’s Mines is labeled as Disc #10046
Engraved on both sides, it reads:
King Solomon’s Mines - Color - Side (1-2 depending on disc and side) - RCA and Selectavision are Tradmarks of RCA Corp. Made in USA. 10046
Hand etched on side two it reads: 11 (possibly 1 - 1 or H) -7-131
All Prototypes were purchased by the same seller of California, at different times, in different ebay auction listings.
The seller informed me, he purchased them in the SF east bay area, at an estate sale. A year after buying two of these, he listed this one. After buying it, I asked if he had more and offered him a price to buy them all and he agreed.
You'll notice a name of "Bob Moore" on the label. I did a google search "Bob Moore RCA videodisc" and it lead me to a PDF in the first results. Inside that PDF is a photo of Bob Moore and it under his photo it reads:
"Robert Moore is the Ed Rep for the Selecta-
Vision Project at Rockville Road, Ind.,
replacing Francis Holt. Dr. Moore has been
with RCA for twelve years with assignments
at RCA Laboratories, Corporate Product
and Market Planning, and SelectaVision. He
currently reports to the Staff Vice President,
SelectaVision Videodisc Operations in Indianapolis."
All of these RCA prototypes evidently belonged to him. How cool is that!
page 78 of;
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1977-12-1978-01.pdf
"The first CED prototype discs were multi-layered, consisting of a vinyl substrate, nickel conductive layer, glow-discharge insulating layer and silicone lubricant top layer. Failure to fully solve the stylus/disc wear and manufacturing complexity forced RCA to seek simpler construction of the disc. The final disc was crafted using PVC blended with carbon to make the disc conductive. To preserve stylus and groove life, a thin layer of silicone was applied to the disc as a lubricant.
CED videodiscs were originally conceived as being housed in jackets and handled by hand similar to LP records, but during testing it was shown that exposure to dust caused skipped grooves. If dust was allowed to settle on the discs, the dust would absorb moisture from the air and cement the dust particle to the disc surface, causing the stylus to jump back in a locked groove situation. Thus, an idea was developed in which the disc would be stored and handled in a plastic caddy from which the CED would be extracted by the player so that exposure to dust would be minimized."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc
Wikis source link:
http://cedmagic.com/history/ced-1977-vs-1982.html
