Curious record side labeling

I may be the oldest f*rt to post on this thread (born in 1947), and of course I remember record changers. I did own a Dual 1015 in the late 60's, but never stacked records on it. Rightly or not, I was concerned that it might damage my records: I reasoned that no good could come of dropping a non-spinning LP on top of another moving (at 33 1/3 rpm) LP.

I can recall a few nightmare scenarios with a record changer. A friend had one and we were listening to some records. When we heard the same album being replayed, it was time to panic. That meant that the next record in series had not fallen completely (i.e., it was hung up) so the arm returned to playing the same record it had just played. The next record could be just barely hanging on, waiting to drop and sandwich the tonearm.

I remember my parents had a record changer in their console that had a device with a claw like clamp that would flip the record over (78 rpm). If memory serves me right it was a Stanton. Now that was progress , early 1950's.

No doubt vinyl today is valued for its sound quality and most things revolve around that. Well, maybe album art and some enjoy physically interacting more with their recordings than digital usually permits.

But from the 50-70's, when vinyl and apparently also changers were king, it was more about musical selection and convenience. That's what most people played records for. Audiophile type users were a very small minority.

Neat how times change.....