Single (music) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A 7", 45 rpm record with a big hole in it - required an adapter to play on a turntable, usually.
We have had portable music players. A little suitcase that opened up, plugged into the wall, and let you put on a stack of 45s (stacks of wax) for impromptu dances in your socks (sock hops).
Mine had vacuum tubes and I could fix it myself when the tubes died.
If a song was a chartbuster, both sides of the 45 would have the same song. Although there were exceptions, each side of a 45 would be one song only (same or different song, but usually just one). You'd play a stack, unload the stack and turn it over to play the other side - and the really big hits would play either way.
Affordable by teens, LPs (long-playing record albums) were typically not.
This is pretty close to my first personal music player:
You'd replace the stubby spindle with the tall changer spindle, and then you put a big doo-dad on the changer spinder for a 45 changer. On this model, the black disk in center likely had a 1/4 turn that would make it pop up to hold a 45.
A 33 rpm LP would simply hang out over the edges of the case for this sort of model.
The dials were more elegant on mine, but this was the best I could find.
That switch in the back: 16, 33 and 1/3, 45, 78 rpm settings, as I recall.
And yes - I had Edison 78s.
jk
