January 10, 1949 the music changes format and speed: the 45 rpm is born. It wasn’t the first vinyl record (Columbia had made it the previous year), but it was a 30-centimeter-wide record that did 33 rpm and contained much more music than its predecessor, the 78 rpm shellac record which contained a maximum of 5 minutes of music.
The single was the perfect compromise: on vinyl like the 33 rpm, it contained the music of a 78 rpm but was smaller (20 centimeters in diameter) and less fragile. And above all it was cheaper. It was made by Rca, then Rca Victor, the second oldest US record label. The question of which was the first single to be recorded is rather debated: the most accredited thesis indicates a children’s song from the series Pee Wee The Piccolo (here you can hear him in a video). But it was rock ‘n roll that marked the success of the single: the length of the songs was perfect and allowed to release many singles, instead of the 33 rpm album, which will become popular since the 1970s.
The single also gave a great boost to an object that had been invented a few years earlier, the juke box. Initially the music that was listened to was recorded on a wax cylinder, but from 1950 the juke boxes with the 45s took off, becoming one of the symbolic objects of at least two decades.
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