Shellac was a popular material, obtained from the secretion of Kerria lacca (the Latin name of this insect), living on fig trees on the Malay Peninsula.

Imagine how much hard work these tiny insects have done, it is enough to realize that as much as 18,000 tons of shellac were processed into 260 million records for Europe between 1921-1928. In the USA, there was even more because only in the year 1927, 104 million records were sold. It seems that entire families of these insects did a lot of work for us - and all for free.