A view of the record press shop during the 1930`s showing manual presses producing 78 rpm shellac discs Portalspace Records factory commissioned in January 2001 In 1907, at Hayes in Middlesex, a small rural community on the edge of London, a foundation stone was laid for a fledgling music business known as The Gramophone Company Limited. The founders of the Company were pioneers in the then new technology of disc records and fortunately were forward thinking enough to secure a very large site as within two decades it had become a World renowned centre for recorded music. Best known for the ‘Dog and Trumpet’ trademark, the Company had merged with its rival, Columbia, to form Electric and Musical Industries – EMI. In its heyday the Hayes works had over 12,000 employees and made everything from gramophone needles to finely veneered radiogram cabinets as well as the records themselves. Hayes became the administrative and technical centre of an international corporation with a presence in over 30 countries at least 25 of which had their own record factories. These initially made shellac 78rpm records and with the introduction of the 33?rpm and 45rpm formats in the 1950’s they were adapted to process the relatively new vinyl material. The explosion onto the music scene of groups such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles created a boom in record sales that threatened to outstrip production capacity and EMI engineers began to develop a whole new range of production methods and equipment. Automation was seen as the only solution and the design office and workshops at Hayes, in collaboration with engineers from other EMI territories, began serious development of materials, processes and machines. The result was a range of equipment covering the whole manufacturing cycle for receipt of the master lacquer to the final sleeveing. Research, development and refinement continued for the next three decades with the benefits of continual feedback from the many newly equipped plants. It is the fruits of that huge investment in experience, knowledge and resources that Portalspace have inherited. All of our machinery carries the EMI pedigree and we are especially proud of our Type 1400 presses. It is an added pleasure to us that, 97 years later, we are located on the very site where it all started and we are proud to be able to carry on a great tradition in recorded music.