It seems obvious to us today that disc records would always have two sides, but they didn’t The story behind such an apparently simple idea was fraught with the usual patent wars, false starts and stops, and the appearance of a bevy of talented, even tragic, inventors on three continents. 

 Ademor Napoleon Petit might have been rather petite in physical stature (he stood 5ft 3in tall) and he might have liked the idea of petite typewriters. But he was pretty big on ideas, and his most lasting legacy being the two-sided record.