<P> The most influential turntable was the Technics SL - 1200, which was developed in 1971 by a team led by Shuichi Obata at Matsushita, which then released it onto the market in 1972 . It was adopted by New York City hip hop DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore and Afrika Bambaataa in the 1970s . As they experimented with the SL - 1200 decks, they developed scratching techniques when they found that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter . Since then, turntablism spread widely in hip hop culture, and the SL - 1200 remained the most widely used turntable in DJ culture for the next several decades . </P> <P> Turntablism as a modern art form and musical practice has its roots within African - American inner city Hip - Hop and Hip - Hop culture of the late 1970s . Kool Herc (a Jamaican DJ who immigrated to New York City), Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash are widely credited for having cemented the now established role of DJ as hip hop's foremost instrumentalist . Kool Herc's invention of break - beat DJing is generally regarded as the foundational development in hip hop history, as it gave rise to all other elements of the genre . His influence on the concept of "DJ as turntablist" is equally profound . </P> <P> To understand the significance of this achievement, it is important to first define the "break ." Briefly, the "break" of a song is a musical fragment only seconds in length, which typically takes the form of an "interlude" in which all or most of the music stops except for the percussion . Kool Herc introduced the break - beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely . This is done by buying two of the same record, finding the break on each record, and switching from one to the other using the DJ mixer: e.g., as record A plays, the DJ quickly backtracks to the same break on record B, which will again take the place of A at a specific moment where the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records . Using that idea, Grandmaster Flash elaborated on Kool Herc's invention of break - beat DJing and came up with the quick - mix theory, in which Flash sectioned off a part of the record like a clock . He described it as being "...like cutting, the backspin, and the double - back ." </P> <P> Kool Herc's revolutionary techniques set the course for the development of turntablism as an art form in significant ways . Most important, however, he developed a new form of DJing that did not consist of just playing and mixing records one after the other . The type of DJ that specializes in mixing a set is well respected for his / her own set of unique skills, but playlist mixing is still DJing in the traditional sense . Kool Herc instead originated the idea of creating a sequence for his own purposes, introducing the idea of the DJ as the "feature" of parties, whose performance on any given night would be different than on another night, because the music would be created by the DJ, mixing a bassline from one song with a beat from another song . The DJ would be examined critically by the crowd on both a technical and entertainment level . </P>

Who created the unique combination of cutting and double backing called the quick mix theory