The Needle

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 39, 11 April 1930, Page 8

The Needle

Not Easily Made GHALL we consider the gramophone needle? I encountered this passage in an Qnglish work: "Hvery gramophone needle takes a month to make. Its working life is at the most five minutes, Experts have worked it all out. They say that a gramophone needle travels a track along the record seven hundred and twenty feet long, and that it carries a load of three and a half ounces. As the area of the point is three-thousandths of an inch, this means ‘that pressure on the point of a gramophone needle is twelve tons to the square inch. They are made of specially tested and hardened steel. I entered a factory where girls were making gramophone needles. They take bundles of thin steel about a foot long and run them through machines which sharpen both ends. The next machine cuts off the sharpened ends, and the now blunt steel is sharpened, cut, resharpened, and cut until the last two needles are’ taken from it. Trays containing millions of needles travel through a long

furnace. As they advance they change colour; they become millions of bright orange needles, sparks flicker over them, and when they have been adequately baked the trays tip up and millions of needles fall with a splash into an oil bath. They are then polished in revolving machines. A month from the time they are sharpened and cut they are ready to play.