The story of shellac begins on a local, infinitely small scale. The resource which, once processed, became a key component in global record manufacturing at the turn of the twentieth century was secreted by a tiny parasitic insect. The Tachardia lacca or Laccifer lacca, as the insect was scientifically described in the eighteenth century, measures no more than 1/20th of an inch long. It infests a variety of host trees – principally kusum, palas and ber – most commonly found in the forest region lying between Calcutta and Central India, and yields two principal by-products. The first one of these is a reddish dye, known as lac. The second one, shellac, is an orange-coloured resinous substance exuded by the clustered bodies of breeding females infesting the fresh twigs of the host tree. In the course of their six-month existence, the blind and wingless female insects, settling ‘in colonies of thousands’ on the new growth of trees, build an intricate architecture of hard resinous cases and passageways. This labyrinthine infrastructure is the place where the insects live and give birth, but it also serves as their graveyard. The new generation, unable to settle on the parent tree, swarm and find other trees to infest. The cycle begins again. The lac-encrusted branches of the old tree are manually harvested and form the basis for shellac production (see Chapter 2). The production of shellac – and by extension the history of sound reproduction – is closely linked to the cycles of productivity and fertility of the insects.