<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> 78 rpm video Play media Video of a 1936 spring - motor - driven 78 rpm acoustic (non-electronic) gramophone playing a shellac record . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Problems playing this file? See media help . </Td> </Tr> <P> A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English, or record) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove . The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc . At first, the discs were commonly made from shellac; starting in the 1950s polyvinyl chloride became common . In recent decades, records have sometimes been called vinyl records, or simply vinyl . </P> <P> The phonograph disc record was the primary medium used for music reproduction throughout the 20th century . It had co-existed with the phonograph cylinder from the late 1880s and had effectively superseded it by around 1912 . Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as the compact cassette were mass - marketed . By the 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991 . From the 1990s to the 2010s, records continued to be manufactured and sold on a much smaller scale, and were especially used by disc jockeys (DJs) and released by artists in mostly dance music genres, and listened to by a niche market of audiophiles . The phonograph record has made a notable niche resurgence in the early 21st century--9.2 million records were sold in the U.S. in 2014, a 260% increase since 2009 . Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014 . </P>

When did the first vinyl record come out