If viewing on computer or tablet click here for the full multimedia experience.

HEAD engineer Bob Kita leans on his desk in Shure’s HQ in Chicago. He has a problem - converting their Stereo Dynetic phonograph cartridge to a 15-degree angle cannot be done. They will have to build an entirely new one.

It’s 1964 and Kita and his team are about to produce the needle of choice for turntablists and hip-hop DJs 20 years into the future - the M44-7. Fast-forward half-a-century and, incredibly, this same cartridge is still favoured by top DJs and sound-engineers around the world.

Popularised by one musical invention, the jukebox, and then resuscitated by another in hip-hop and, more specifically, turntablism, this is the story of how a classic piece of American engineering survived the tidal wave of five decades of technological change.

Given that today, a new piece of technology can be outdated within a year, the point is worth emphasising. Since 1964, personal computers, the music synthesiser, the walkman, GPS, the mobile phone, genetic sequencing, CDs, MP3s, email and the internet have all been invented and fundamentally changed our world in countless ways. Yet the M44-7, distinctive-looking with its black and white block shape, has never changed. Even the advent of digital controller DJing cannot kill it.

Sound engineer Rob Thomas has spent many years working with the world’s top DJs at clubs such as Sankeys in the UK. He said: “It’s such a great sounding needle and lots of DJs request them all the time. They just seem to add a lot of warmth to vinyl tracks and are very reliable.”

DJ QBert, a legend in the world of scratch DJing, gave the cartridge perhaps the highest compliment possible when he named the M44-7 as the one to beat when designing the Thud Rumble Ortofon needles. And this was 40 years later.

The story of such a serious piece of engineering deserves some high-spec machinery to provide the illustrations. The exclusive slow motion footage you see in this feature is from the state-of-the-art Photron SAx2 (used in military weapons testing). All videos were recorded at 500 frames per second (20x slower than normal) except for the chapter entitled 'The Odd Couple' which was filmed at 1000 fps. The behaviour of a record needle tip has rarely been seen through such a powerful medium.