Change the Needle

'Change the needle' is a term some of you may be familiar with. In Britain, in any case, we use this to mean 'change the subject'. A similar term is 'change the record'. What people may not know is that this term emanates from the era of the gramophone.

The reason for this saying is that when you played a record (in those days, shellac records), you would have a tin containing about 100 needles and from this tin you would take a needle, place it in the gramophone arm and screw it tight. Once the record started spinning, you would place the arm onto the beginning of the record and the song would begin.

Once the song had finished, so too had the needle, at which point you would deposit it in a little cup carved into the gramophone (far right of image).

I have an Odeon 1928 gramophone. It's portable, namely, you use a handle to wind it up. A release catch then determines whether the turntable starts or stops.

Now how about that for a Blip picnic sometime?