[Courtney Louise]

As far as I was aware, Seeburg and RCA co developed the 45 rpm single because of jukeboxes. The M100A Jukebox was a mighty beast, holding 78rpm records in a vertical stack, these were heavy, fragile and wore out quickly. The M100B was the first jukebox to use the new 45rpm records, they were light, better groove noise, and you could get more of them into the space, this bought about jukeboxes that could take 80 or even 100 singles to give 160 or 200 plays respectively. With 78's I think the limit was 50 records to give 100 plays.

The first 45's were on coloured vinyl with the colour denoting the genre of the content, with the first ever being a green vinyl single called Texacarna Baby. I have a copy of this 45 and the sound quality for something dating from 1948/9 is quite amazing.