German Records Found On Submarine

[Bert45]

There have been several news items on TV and on websites about records found on the German submarine U-534 sunk in 1945. The news items have referred to the records as being vinyl, but I wonder if this is correct. Although the first vinyl records were produced in 1930 they did not become common until later. Until the 1950s, most discs were made of shellac, "a resin secreted by female lac bugs, mixed with clay and cotton fibres. This brittle and inexpensive composition dominated the industry until the early 1950s." So I'd like to know if the news reporter are just being lazy and saying these records are 'vinyl' because they are round, flat and black. Also I'd like to know what took the Birkenhead museum so long. The submarine was raised from the sea bottom in 1993 and moved to Birkenhead in 1996. Why are we only hearing about the records now, 27 years later?

[Buenchico]

They're made of shellac. See here:
https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2023-04-03/records-trapped-on-german-submarine-for-48-years-played-for-first-time

They were put in storage many years ago (no doubt along with many other artefacts found on the vessel)and, just as it's not uncommon for museums to rediscover things in their vaults from time to time that, up until then,had been thought to be of little interest, they've only recently come to the attention of researchers.

[Peter Pedant]

Good points made by both
You need a different machine for vinyl

And objects disappearing into the maw of large museums. Tell that to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo - founded Mariette 1867 - even the contents of King Tut's tomb were not recorded correctly