This is the Billboard Magazine Ad from 1959 where RCA Records announced their anti-static vinyl mixture with ingredient 317X to prevent their records from attracting dust. This ingredient made the vinyl very slightly conductive, dissipating static High Voltage charge.¹ They offered this to the industry license-free; of course, the vinyl suppliers did charge more for it. Was the "license fee" effectively built into this cost? Miracle Surface worked really well, just as they said it did. Some say it was discontinued due to added surface noise.

¹Conductivity is the inverse of Resistivity. Pure vinyl is an insulator and will not conduct electricity at all, therefore charge is not dissipated. With the 317X ingredient, the Resistivity was probably lowered to around 1MΩ per square area, in electrical terms. Pure vinyl is also clear, and we know that carbon-black is added to make records look black, so wouldn't this also add conductivity? I'm researching this.

Miracle SurfaceB

The excerpt on right shows that even in 1964, RCA was still touting their "Miracle Surface" vinyl mixture, as related to, if not part of, their controversial "Dynagroove" process of disc mastering. The full article is on our "Dynagroove" web page.

Dynagroove exerpt on Miracle Surface