big holes in the middle of 45 rpm records

[TimJo]

In the UK 7" singles generally came with small hole within an easily removed central section (3 or 4 narrow ties between central disc and the rest). For juke box use these areas would be pushed through. When singles were then sold on "ex juke box" a replacement central disc would come with them. This occasionally meant you lost some information from the label.
Very rarely a single would not have an easily removed central disc...don't know what they did with these for juke box use.

Here's a good example of this for those who haven't seen this before...

[lovingthesound]

Back in the day, maybe deals were done with some of these folks ... was a best of both worlds scenario, kinda like selling doughnut holes ...

Save money and material on pressings and you get to sell the missing piece back to the consumer as an extra ... :)

[Chris A]

A friend of mine, who knew Sarnoff quite well, always said that RCA was behind every major innovation in sound—way behind.

They were pushing their very cheap 45rpm player. This is the same company that fought in Washington for legislation that would restrict FM frequencies to TV audio. The reason for that was that they made a lot of money mass-producing cheap AM radios.

Sarnoff never got over the fact that Major Armstrong (who, incidentally married Sarnoff's private secretary) beat RCA in the FM race. Following her husband's suicide, Mrs. Armstrong, whom I got to know, fought and won all the patent lawsuits that were left in the wake of her husband's long struggle to obtain due credit.

[OakBarrel]

Cecil Adams is mistaken when he says "The 78, mercifully, was out of the picture by 1950." Actually, there was a slow transition between the LP and 78's throughout the 1950s. I would say several labels had new albums released in 78RPM as late as 1953-1954; I once saw some "new old stock" 78's at a garage sale that were still sealed and price tagged, and they included some early 1950s Sinatra albums (if memory serves).

As to the large center hole: the generally-accepted theory is that the large center hole on 45s made it easier for jukeboxes to handle them. I think the reality was that RCA did everything they could to try to create a radically new format to thwart CBS -- different-sized record, different hole, different rotational speed, etc. -- just for spite. Various books on RCA give different theories on why the 45RPM speed was chosen. The usual reason is that it was an even multiple of 60Hz current, so it'd be easier to make a gear or belt to turn the platter, though that doesn't take into account 50Hz foreign power. (50RPM would've been just as good, when you think about it.)

Peter Goldmark wrote a lot about this in his 1973 autobiography Maverick Inventor: My Turbulent Years at CBS, which goes into a lot of detail on how and why the LP was invented. (Goldmark also takes credit for a lot of things it turned out he didn't exactly do, since a lot of the grunt work was done by his colleagues at CBS Labs, but he did oversee the project.) CBS and RCA really hated each other, and RCA was really blind-sided by the LP, because they had no idea CBS had solved all the problems of microgroove recording and the other technical issues. RCA did win the next technology war that followed, compatible color TV, and I suspect they made a lot more money on that than they ever did on the 45 (or CBS did on the LP).

Last quick comment: I once saw a hilarious 1949 RCA promotional film where they introduced their 45RPM record, which they claimed was "perfect even for long classical symphonies." The film showed a changer that could stack about a dozen 45RPM singles, and the changer yanked the tonearm, dropped a new record, and dropped the tonearm back down in about 2 seconds, which was astonishing. They had to specifically arrange the RCA classic symphonies to insert "pauses" in them for these record-changes, which was stupid beyond belief. You gotta wonder how dumb those guys were to believe the 7" 45 record would work for long albums.

Right on point. Excellent post.

[Cymbaline]

By the way, did anyone ever notice that the hole in a 45 is the exact size of a silver dollar?

[mrwolk]

Actually according to the book "Note the Notes" an illustrated history of the Columbia Record Label 1901-1958 by M.W. Sherman and Kurt Nauck there were some large spindle issues in the early 1900's.

[Jay F]

Back in the day, maybe deals were done with some of these folks ... was a best of both worlds scenario, kinda like selling doughnut holes ...

Save money and material on pressings and you get to sell the missing piece back to the consumer as an extra ... :)Those metal adapters could crack a record. Hated them.

[OakBarrel]

Those metal adapters could crack a record. Hated them.

Easy to get in, hard to not destroy a record out.:sigh::confused:

[MLutthans]

They actually make a "do it yourself" hand dinker in England

"Hand Dinker" is my new favorite compound noun. Thank you.

[Chris R]

Big Holes: USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal

Small Holes: UK, Ireland, Holland, South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden...

Why this difference ? No idea.
Yeah...no. In Canada a number of labels went small hole starting in the mid 1970s including London/Phonogram/Polygram and Warner. I have a lot of small hole Canadian 45s. The London 45s gave you the option to punch out the middle to make a large hole.

Here's a sample including Justin Hayward/John Lodge - "Blue Guitar" from 1975, lower right.
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1795/tnimg22591ol8.jpg

[Chris R]

bump.

[Dudley Morris]

Cecil Adams is mistaken when he says "The 78, mercifully, was out of the picture by 1950." Actually, there was a slow transition between the LP and 78's throughout the 1950s. I would say several labels had new albums released in 78RPM as late as 1953-1954; I once saw some "new old stock" 78's at a garage sale that were still sealed and price tagged, and they included some early 1950s Sinatra albums (if memory serves).You could still get 78's later than that in overseas territories where the new tech was slower to come in - there are Elvis 78's from South Africa from as late as 1960 I believe.

[Evan L]

Don't forget the infamous India Beatles 78s!

Evan

[il pleut]

A friend of mine, who knew Sarnoff quite well, always said that RCA was behind every major innovation in sound—way behind.

They were pushing their very cheap 45rpm player. This is the same company that fought in Washington for legislation that would restrict FM frequencies to TV audio. The reason for that was that they made a lot of money mass-producing cheap AM radios.

Sarnoff never got over the fact that Major Armstrong (who, incidentally married Sarnoff's private secretary) beat RCA in the FM race. Following her husband's suicide, Mrs. Armstrong, whom I got to know, fought and won all the patent lawsuits that were left in the wake of her husband's long struggle to obtain due credit.


allegedly one of the first things out of sarnoff's mouth after hearing of armstrong's death was "i didn't kill armstrong" which if true, is telling.

[torcan]

Yeah...no. In Canada a number of labels went small hole starting in the mid 1970s including London/Phonogram/Polygram and Warner. I have a lot of small hole Canadian 45s. The London 45s gave you the option to punch out the middle to make a large hole.



Not exactly true. It was in the early '80s that many Canadian labels (for some reason) started making promo copies with small holes, but the regular commercial release was still the bigger hole. Canadian promo 45s featured mono-stereo versions until sometime in the late '70s, then almost all of them started including the original B-side sometime after that. A short time later, they all seemed to switch to small hole promos. The only label that never did this in Canada was Sony (Columbia, Epic, etc.)

Virgin records in Canada did start releasing small hole commercial 45s by about 1986 though. I've got Canadian copies of Simple Minds "Don't You Forget About Me", "Sanctify Yourself" and "All the Things She Said" all with big holes, and picture sleeves. All those were from the '85-86 time frame. Just about any single after that released on that label had small holes.

[Chris R]

Not exactly true. It was in the early '80s that many Canadian labels (for some reason) started making promo copies with small holes, but the regular commercial release was still the bigger hole. Canadian promo 45s featured mono-stereo versions until sometime in the late '70s, then almost all of them started including the original B-side sometime after that. A short time later, they all seemed to switch to small hole promos. The only label that never did this in Canada was Sony (Columbia, Epic, etc.)
You may be right. All of the Warner 45s pictured on the previous page are promo copies. I was working in radio back in the day. 99% of the domestics singles that I have from that time, are promo copies. However, that London/Threshold 45 from the mid 1970s was purchased at a retailer.

Virgin records in Canada did start releasing small hole commercial 45s by about 1986 though. I've got Canadian copies of Simple Minds "Don't You Forget About Me", "Sanctify Yourself" and "All the Things She Said" all with big holes, and picture sleeves. All those were from the '85-86 time frame. Just about any single after that released on that label had small holes.
All of my domestic Simple Minds 45s from that period are large hole.

In the following photo we have:

Top row
"Sanctify Yourself", "Don't You Eat Breakfast Without Me"
Bottom row
"Speed Your Love To Me", "All The Things She Said" (date stamped June 13, 1986)

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/1193/tnimg22641hv6.jpg

Of the two AM radio stations I worked at during the 1980s, 58 CKY Winnipeg and 66 CF(F)R Calgary, the music directors date stamped most of the singles that came in.

[dirwuf]

This is probably the wrong forum to ask this, but I figure to get more interesting answers here...

Why didn't they just make 45 rpm records with normal 'album-sized' holes?

My guess is that when 45's were first produced, they were intended to be played only on a certain type of turntable....but that obviously fell by the wayside, so why didn't they just conform? Would it has pissed off jukebox manufacturers?

[hominy]

They got it right in the UK where all 45s had built-in adapters you could just pop out if you wanted to. I don't think you could have popped them back in though. Later UK 45s were solid with the small spindle hole.

[yamfox]

Because the large hole made it much easier for the jukebox to handle it.

[Davidmk5]

i would guess to stack them for longplay & jukebox formats , but i'm just guessing .

[acjetnut]

Amongst my 45's, the ones from the 80's sometimes started to have "normal" sized holes.

[Vidiot]

My own theory is that, back in 1949, RCA wanted to make their system as incompatible as possible with Columbia's small-hole 33RPM system. One can make an argument that jukebox changers worked better with the large-hole records, but there were small-hole 78RPM changers for years before that, so either way can work.

[csampson]

Per everythingradio.com:

"The 45 RPM record was developed by RCA Victor company in 1948 - immediately following the invention of "vinyl" plastic and the development of the 12" LP record by CBS engineers (also in 1948). The 45 RPM speed was the only one to be decided by a precise optimization procedure. The optimum use of a disc record of constant rotational speed occurs when the innermost recorded diameter is half of the outermost recorded diameter. "

RCA marketed the new 45 format by producing and selling hundreds of thousands of 45-ONLY turntables at near cost. Of course, these new turntables with the big center spindle could not play other records with the small holes, so owners were locked into buying only the new style records. By the mid 1950's, the 45 format had become the accepted standard for selling singles, serving RCA through licensing fees (as the patent holders) for both record production and record player production by other companies.

[hotrodjunkie]

I don't get why they STILL make them with a large hole.

[Dodgytc]

I don't get why they STILL make them with a large hole.

Yes, this puzzles me too. For example a label like Third Man Records that takes pride in the visual aspects of their records still has the large hole ruining the wonderful label design.
But then I am a Brit living in the US, and I just miss the UK style.