In the late teens to the 1920s, record companies saw higher value in selling phonographs due to the grandiosity of a one-time, serious purchase rather than a cheap item like a record. Due to this lack of attention, oftentimes records were cased in brown paper bags, and only later did cardboard albums, similar to photo albums, become available to protect and organize them. With the Great Depression soon hitting at the close of the decade, record sales plummeted from 150 million a year in the late 20s to a measly 5 million following the stock market crash; jukeboxes being nearly the only thing keeping these companies afloat. In 1939, surviving this major low point for the industry, Columbia hired the creator of cover art, Alex Steinweiss. Originally met with resistance from higher management due to an increase in production costs, it's needless to say that they stood corrected once they saw a dramatic jump in sales following an initial run, proving that graphics did in fact attract and entice consumers. Following the birth of cover art along with the introduction of the standard long-playing record jacket (introduced in 1948 by Steinweiss as well), cover art flourished and became a new standard within the record industry. Up until the post-war years when labels began to have larger budgets and cheaper printing methods, photographs were used sparingly, as hand coloring and colored images were still highly expensive during the time.