Cactus needles to read records?

In the '20s, records were called "78s", and could be listened to with a hand-cranked gramophone. They were 30 cm in diameter, coated with shellac, and could contain more or less 5 minutes of music. To read the recording, metal needles were used, which had to be changed each time the record was played. The weight of the needle was used to determine the volume of the sound. However, these metal needles were too hard and caused considerable damage to the records.

In the late 1920s, the BCN Gramophone Needle Company set up in South Africa to manufacture gramophone needles from prickly pear thorns. Much more flexible than metal needles, they had the advantage of causing much less damage to records and producing better sound. For the record, the project in South Africa ultimately failed, due to a mealy bug that decimated the fig trees, but BCN found the precious thorns on St. Helena.

Other types of plant needles existed at the time: thorns from various cacti, bamboo, rose thorns, wood... You could carve them yourself, using a small device. Some were even sold with emery paper to repolish them and resharpen the point.

When vinyl replaced shellac on 78s in the late '40s and especially the '50s, the pickups were quite different, using sapphire and diamond.

The Observatoire du Monde des Plantes features a large number of remarkable cacti, with beautiful needles: the "mother-in-law's cushion"(Echinocactus grusonii) and Astrophytum ornatum , among others.

The Collections of the Observatoire du Monde des Plantes

Les collections de l'Observatoire du Monde des PlantesThe Plant World Observatory video

^{Echinocactus grusonii, also known as "mother-in-law's cushion}

^{Astrophytum ornatum}

^{Photos ©Patrick Motte}