Interesting. Cecil on record speeds and the big hole.
I learn something new all the time.
31 here. I clicked the photo and thought to myself “I dunno, but it looks like one of those things found in the center of some records”.
I wouldn’t have been able to tell you they were from 45s, though.
lemon party
Penis pursues.
… on the Isle of Man.
I’m 32 and collects vinyl. I know what it is.
43 and I knew what it was immediately. I used to have a lot of 45s but haven’t seen one of those since my high school days.
Anyone else remember the Stars on 45 medleys?
I hope so. At least his girlfriend won’t get pregnant.
Brings back memories, my older sibs 45’s, Jimi, The Beatles,Led Zep, Allman’s, all heard first on 45’s. To this day the random odd skips on those records remain in my brain “All along the watchtower bzzt bzzt kept the view, while all the women came and went, bzzt bzzt servants too” VInyl was tough but not that tough.
Does ayone else do that? 
Baby’s First Bat’leth?
Put it on a chain and wear it around your neck and he’ll think you’ve gone Satanist.
Not only did I know what it was just by looking at the name of the link, but I already guessed at the color. Didn’t they also come in red?
I was pretty familiar them in my early days, but by my mid teens I had given up on 45s. 12-year-old girls played 45s. Men played LPs.
gonzomax, you didn’t need to select the speed before putting the record on. You could change it while the record played! I discovered this when I was 13 and bored out of my skull.
My thing is that the one and only one I’ve ever seen looked completely different. It looked pretty similar to a domino turned on it’s edge, with a hole in the middle.
Then again, it’s been a while, so maybe I’m thinking about something else.
As Cecil said in the column linked to by dwyr, they were intended to have different hole sizes so as to be incompatible: They were originally created by competing record companies with different standards.
I’m not exactly 17 (more like 45), and I didn’t realize what that was.
Actually, I though it was one type of disk for a toy Tracer Gun, which I guess fits it into the throwing disk ‘weapon’ category. My parents had a turntable, but were never into singles very much, then in the 1970s my Dad got into cassettes big time for his Country Music fixes, and Mom listened to the oldies stations on the radio, so no adapters were around the house.
My 23 year old daughter had no idea what it was when I showed her the picture just now.
Wow. I’m feelin’ oooooold. Geez.
I’m 35, and I remember having those for my kiddie records. Puff the Magic Dragon needed one of those. I never knew why, I just knew some records needed adapters.
You win.
My brothers and I had truckloads of these growing up. We called them “Pfanstiehls” after the brand name stamped on them.
Anybody remember the aluminum ones?
I recognized it immediately (age 41) but I’d have to explain to my kids what a “record” is, let alone the subtleties of RPM.
12-year-old and younger. A lot of music and stories for kids came out on 45s. I remember one system that had a pillar adapter (one that sat on the turntable) that was a multigon of little flat mirrors. The records that you could buy to use with it had animation stills printed on the paper label of the record. If you looked into the mirrors as they spun, you’d see a little animation of a duck swimming or a frog jumping into the water, or whatever else would go with the song.
To a kid, that was really cool.