On this day in 1949 — 72 years ago — RCA Victor introduced the 45 rpm single record, which had been in development since 1940.
The seven-inch disc was designed to compete with the Long Playing record introduced by Columbia a year earlier. Both formats offered better fidelity and longer playing time than the 78rpm record that was then currently in use.
Advertisements for new record players boasted that with 45rpm records, the listener could hear up to ten records with speedy, silent, hardly noticeable changes.