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51-782: Emile Berliner received U.S. patents 372,786 and 382,790 on the Gramophone on November 8, 1887, and May 15, 1888, respectively. This was before the organization of the North American Phonograph Company , which first produced cylinder recordings for public use, and thus Berliner 's flat disc record is roughly contemporary with the exploitation of the cylinder medium, though it took longer for Berliner to commence production of his discs in America. Although based in Washington, D.C., Berliner's first joint venture

102-486: A 36-hp rotary engine for use in helicopters, an innovation on the heavier inline engines then in use. In 1909, Berliner founded the Gyro Motor Company in Washington, D.C. The company's principals included Berliner, president; Moore, designer and engineer; and Joseph Sanders (1877–1944), inventor, engineer, and manufacturer. The manager of the company was Spencer Heath (1876–1963), a mechanical engineer who

153-670: A Berliner subsidiary in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1901. E. Berliner Gramophone of Canada was established in 1899. It was first located in the Aqueduct Street building of Northern Electric in Montreal, and commenced marketing records and gramophones the following year. In 1904, the company received its charter as the Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada. Early recordings were imported from masters recorded in

204-585: A case of cylinders and his dog, named Nipper . Barraud's original painting depicts Nipper staring intently into the horn of an Edison-Bell while both sit on a polished wooden surface. The horn on the Edison-Bell machine was black and after a failed attempt at selling the painting to a cylinder record supplier of Edison Phonographs in the UK, a friend of Barraud's suggested that the painting could be brightened up (and possibly made more marketable) by substituting one of

255-485: A fourth story is that Johnson took the name from the popular 'Victor' bicycle, which he had admired for its superior engineering. Of these four accounts, the first two are the most generally accepted." The first use of the Victor name was on a letterhead, dated March 28, 1901. Herbert Rose Barraud's deceased brother, a London photographer, willed him his estate, including his DC-powered Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph with

306-784: A helicopter built by Berliner and J. Newton Williams of Derby, Connecticut , had Williams "from the ground on three occasions" at Berliner's laboratory in the Brightwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Between 1907 and 1926, Berliner worked on technologies for vertical flight, including a lightweight rotary engine. Berliner obtained automobile engines from the Adams Company in Dubuque, Iowa, whose Adams-Farwell automobile used air-cooled three- or five-cylinder rotary engines developed in-house by Fay Oliver Farwell (1859–1935). Berliner, his assistant R.S. Moore, and Farwell developed

357-546: A negative-image "mother" made from them to stamp discs. A major reversal of Berliner's fortunes occurred when the mastering plant in Washington, D.C. burned down on September 29, 1897, destroying a hundred unissued masters and all of his record manufacturing equipment. Within a few months, however, Berliner was up and running again, with some record production aspects moved to Philadelphia. Berliner records were short-playing. Only about two minutes could comfortably fit on each single-sided 7-inch disc. The absolute maximum depended on

408-695: A nervous breakdown in 1914, also advocated for improvements in public health and sanitation . He also advocated for women's equality and, in 1908, established a scholarship program, the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship , in honor of his mother. On August 3, 1929, Berliner died of a heart attack at his home at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., at the age of 78. He is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., alongside his wife and

459-699: A son, Herbert Samuel Berliner . Patent images in Tag Image File Format Victor Talking Machine Company The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer, incorporated in 1901. Victor was an independent enterprise until 1929 when it was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and became the RCA Victor Division of

510-499: A transmitter is, beyond controversy, the invention of Edison". Berliner moved to Boston in 1877, where he became a United States citizen four years later. He worked for Bell Telephone until 1883, when he returned to Washington and established himself as a private researcher. Berliner also developed a rotary engine and an early version of the helicopter . According to a July 1, 1909, report in The New York Times ,

561-476: Is a continuation of the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR) project by Ted Fagan and William Moran to make a complete discography of all Victor recordings as well as adding the recordings of Columbia, Brunswick and other historic American labels now controlled by Sony Music Entertainment . The Victor archive files are the main source of information for this project. In 2011,

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612-696: Is in the Fairmont-Girard alleyway. On June 16, 1922, Berliner and his son, Henry , demonstrated a helicopter for the United States Army . Henry became disillusioned with helicopters in 1925, and the company shut down. In 1926, Henry Berliner founded the Berliner Aircraft Company, which merged to become Berliner-Joyce Aircraft in 1929. Berliner's other inventions include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth and an acoustic tile . Berliner, who suffered

663-872: The Boston Fadettes ) ·Berliner 967 (" La Donna è Mobile ", sung by F. A. Giannini (sic)), commonly considered as the first serious opera record ·Berliner 932X ("Viva il Vino", sung by Ferruccio Giannini ) ·Berliner 196 ("Whistling coon", sung by George W. Johnson ) ·Berliner 404 ("The Laughing song", sung by G. W. Johnson) ·Berliner 930Y and 0572 (" Miserere ", sung by Ferruccio Giannini) ·Berliner 940 (" Drill ye tarries, drill ", sung by George J. Gaskin ) ·Berliner 3312 ("Blue Bells of Scotland", trombone solo by Arthur Pryor ) ·Berliner 230 ("Commodore polka", cornet solo by W. Paris Chambers ) ·Berliner 3900 (" Carnival of Venice ", saxophone solo by Jean Moeremans ) ·Berliner 62 ("Romance for Trombone", trombone solo with band accompaniment) While these were not

714-623: The United States Gramophone Company in 1894. Berliner was born in Hanover , Germany, in 1851 into a Jewish merchant family. Though Jewish, he eventually became agnostic. He completed an apprenticeship to become a merchant, as was family tradition. While his real hobby was invention, he worked as an accountant to make ends meet. To avoid being drafted in the Franco-Prussian War , Berliner migrated to

765-410: The 1890s. Documenting the output of American Berliner has proved a daunting task, as original records are scarce collector's items and the company employed a system of block numbering that seems to make little sense. Although referred to commonly as "Berliner matrices", they are not true matrix numbers, but catalog numbers concerned with preserving the same number for each selection even if a given title

816-566: The 1930s. Beginning in 1896, Berliner's gramophone players were made by Philadelphia-based machinist Eldridge Johnson , who added a spring motor to drive the previously hand-rotated turntable. Berliner also opened an office in New York City, staffed by Frank Seaman and O. D. LaDow and organized as the National Gramophone Company. Master recordings were made onto zinc plates, which were then electroplated and

867-536: The Berliner subsidiary in England which eventually took the name of Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd.; in 1931, this was one of the companies that was folded into EMI. That same year, Gaisberg established Berliner's German subsidiary as Deutsche Grammophon; this was the longest-lasting record company in history under its original charter, until finally being acquired by Universal Music Group in 1999. Gaisberg also founded

918-651: The Mask and Wig Club, released in April, 1925. On March 21, 1925, Victor recorded its first electrical Red Seal disc, twelve inch 6502 by pianist Alfred Cortot , of works by Chopin and Schubert. In 1926, Johnson sold his controlling (but not holding) interest in the Victor Company to the banking firms of JW Seligman and Speyer & Co. , who in turn sold Victor to the Radio Corporation of America in 1929. The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR)

969-579: The Radio Corporation of America until late 1968, when it was renamed RCA Records . Established in Camden, New Jersey , Victor was the largest and most prestigious firm of its kind in the world, best known for its use of the iconic " His Master's Voice " trademark, the design, production and marketing of the popular "Victrola" line of phonographs and the company's extensive catalog of operatic and classical music recordings by world famous artists on

1020-658: The United States of America in 1870 with a friend of his father's, in whose shop he worked in Washington, D.C. He moved to New York and, living off temporary work such a paper route and cleaning bottles, he studied physics at night at the Cooper Union Institute . After some time working in a livery stable, Berliner became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph . He invented an improved telephone transmitter, one of

1071-595: The United States until a recording studio in Montreal was established in 1906. The Berliner name as a record label lasted longest in Canada. In 1918, Emile Berliner's son Herbert Berliner left Berliner Gram-O-Phone and founded the Compo Company . Herbert's younger brother, Edgar, continued as chief executive of Berliner Gram-o-phone. In 1924, Canadian Berliner was bought out by USA's Victor and became Victor Talking Machine Company of Canada. Emile Berliner died in 1929 –

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1122-496: The Victor imprint. Victor recorded the first jazz and blues records ever issued. The Victor Military Band recorded the first recorded blues song, " The Memphis Blues ", on July 15, 1914, in Camden, New Jersey. In 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded " Livery Stable Blues ". The advent of radio as a home entertainment medium in the early 1920s presented Victor and the entire record industry with new challenges. Not only

1173-692: The brand later in the year. By 1905 it had regained the lead in the American disc record business, while by 1906 Seaman's Zonophone was on a receiver's index. In 1895, comic Billy Golden introduced Berliner to Fred Gaisberg , who, with Barry Peter Owen – a trusted associate within the National Gramophone Company – helped to establish Berliner's overseas interests. Although the German partnership with Kämmer & Reinhardt had long since ended, Berliner still held patents in Germany and England. In 1898, Owen founded

1224-458: The brass-belled horns on display in the window at the new gramophone shop on Maiden Lane . The Gramophone Company in London was founded and managed by an American, William Barry Owen. Barraud paid a visit with a photograph of the painting and asked to borrow a horn. Owen gave Barraud an entire gramophone and asked him to paint it into the picture, offering to buy the result. On close inspection of

1275-458: The case of block 900 (which was meant to be for popular and international songs, only to be completely scrapped and refocused on opera excerpts, granting most matrix numbers to opera singer Ferruccio Giannini ). A simple new more or less sequential numbering system was started in March 1899, in which every number had a leading zero (never used previously) and the letter suffix, when present, denoted

1326-583: The category, e.g., "A" for marching band, "F" for banjo, "N" for vocal quartet. Berliner's foreign matrices employed entirely different strategies, and many to most of those have been documented by discographer Alan Kelly . In 2014, the EMI Archive Trust announced an online initiative that would collect information on Berliner records worldwide. They have what appears to be the largest concentration of Berliner records in one place, numbering close to 18,000 items and largely collected by Fred Gaisberg in

1377-483: The company to the verge of bankruptcy, Victor switched from the acoustical or mechanical method of recording to the new microphone -based electrical system developed by Western Electric in 1925. Victor called its version of the improved fidelity recording process "Orthophonic", and marketed a new line of phonographs referred to as " Orthophonic Victrolas ", scientifically developed by Western Electric to play these new records. Victor's first electrical recordings, issued in

1428-586: The considerably louder gramophone – cylinders had usually been heard through individual stethoscope -like listening tubes, rather than through a horn that yielded relatively feeble sound. A new standard cylinder speed of 160 rpm was soon established, reducing the maximum playing time to a little over two minutes and losing an advantage over Berliner's discs. As the popularity of the gramophone began to pick up, Berliner found himself having to deal with infringers on his patents. In 1898, Berliner shut down at least two firms that were leeching off his business models and, in

1479-564: The dissolution of RCA in 1986, the buildings have been turned into a multi-use office/commercial development, in which the Musée des ondes Emile Berliner , is documenting the history of the man, his company and the building complex, occupies part of the space. The historic Studio Victor located there was until 2014 an active recording studio. In 2015 the La hacienda creativ used the studio for recordings until 2021. The range of material on Berliner records

1530-651: The early years of the company. Another large concentration of Canadian Berliners are held by the National Library of Canada , which has set up the Virtual Gramophone on the web to provide access to them, though their focus is primarily on Canadian artists. There is a notable collection of Berliner records and gramophones housed at the Musée des ondes Emile Berliner, located in Montreal , QC, in one of

1581-563: The first case, products. In 1899, Berliner discovered that Frank Seaman was behind a machine called the Zonophone that seemed an exact replica of the Gramophone. Furious, Berliner cut off all supply to New York, which proved a fatal error. Seaman countersued for breach of contract, and in June 1900 the court granted an injunction against Berliner and United States Gramophone Company. Though he would attempt in several proceedings afterward to have

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1632-571: The first types of microphones . The patent was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company (see The Telephone Cases ), but contested, in a long legal battle, by Thomas Edison . On February 27, 1901, the United States Court of Appeals would declare Berliner's patent void and awarded Edison full rights to the invention. "Edison preceded Berliner in the transmission of speech," the court would write. "The use of carbon in

1683-401: The injunction overturned, it was allowed to stand and it compelled Emile Berliner's exit from the gramophone business in the United States of America. Berliner transferred his patents to Eldridge Johnson, who then changed the name over the door to his own, though Berliner retained a share in the new company. In March 1901, Johnson registered the name Victor Talking Machine Company and launched

1734-475: The most influential or historic records ever released, they certainly are highlights of a typical Berliner collection Emile Berliner Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) originally Emil Berliner , was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American English) used with a gramophone . He founded

1785-449: The name in "His Master's Voice" In America , he writes, "One story claims that Johnson considered his first improved Gramophone to be both a scientific and business 'victory.' A second account is that Johnson emerged as the 'Victor' from the lengthy and costly patent litigations involving Berliner and Frank Seaman's Zonophone . A third story is that Johnson's partner, Leon Douglass , derived the word from his wife's name 'Victoria.' Finally,

1836-580: The name of the United States Gramophone Company and began to manufacture machines and record 7-inch hard rubber discs in 1892 and in 1894 (though commercially available plates would only appear since 1894). Some celluloid discs were also made. In 1895, hard rubber was replaced by a shellac compound, which in various formulations remained the standard disc record material until the first vinyl records – initially made only for radio use and other special applications – were introduced in

1887-557: The new technology and introduced its new records and the Orthophonic Victrola on November 2, 1925, dubbed "Victor Day". Victor's first commercial electrical recording was made at the company's Camden, New Jersey studios on February 26, 1925. A group of eight popular Victor artists, Billy Murray , Frank Banta, Henry Burr , Albert Campbell, Frank Croxton , John Meyer, Monroe Silver , and Rudy Wiedoeft gathered to record "A Miniature Concert". Several takes were recorded by

1938-426: The old RCA Victor factories. Some of the notable artists who recorded for Berliner include: Below is a small selection of the most notable or popular 7" records strung by the company, most times the first iteration of the songs played. ·Berliner 7W (" William Tell overture ", played by Sousa's band ) ·Berliner 140 (" Washington Post march ", played by Sousa's band) ·Berliner 830 ("Morning serenade", played by

1989-519: The old acoustical process, then additional takes were recorded electrically for test purposes. The electrical recordings turned out well, and Victor issued the results that summer as the two sides of twelve inch 78 rpm disc, Victor 35753. Victor's first electrical recording to be issued was Victor 19626, a ten-inch record consisting of two numbers recorded on March 16, 1925, from the University of Pennsylvania 's thirty-seventh annual production of

2040-459: The original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. In the company's early years, Victor issued recordings on the Victor, Monarch and De Luxe labels, with the Victor label on 7-inch records, Monarch on 10-inch records and De Luxe on 12-inch records. De Luxe Special 14-inch records were briefly marketed in 1903–1904. In 1905, all labels and sizes were consolidated into

2091-487: The painting, the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph are visible beneath the paint of the gramophone. In 1915, the "His Master's Voice" logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the Victrola cabinet building at Victor's headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. The building still stands today with replica windows installed during RCA 's ownership of the plant in its later years. Today, one of

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2142-468: The prestigious Red Seal label. After Victor merged with RCA in 1929, the company maintained its eminence as America's foremost producer of records and phonographs until the 1960s. In 1896, Emile Berliner , the inventor of the gramophone and disc record, contracted machinist Eldridge R. Johnson to manufacture his inventions. There are different accounts as to how the "Victor" name came about. RCA historian Fred Barnum gives various possible origins of

2193-503: The same year RCA bought out Victor – and Edgar Berliner resigned from Canadian RCA in 1930. Berliner Gram-o-phone's facilities in Montreal, a complex of buildings at 1001 rue Lenoir and 1050 rue Lacasse in the St-Henri district, became home to RCA Victor Canada over the next several decades, developing and producing such high-tech products as microwave radio relay systems, communication satellites, television broadcast equipment, etc. Since

2244-489: The speed, which was not standardized and ranged from about 75 rpm to a more typical 70 rpm down to as slow as 60 rpm. During most of the 1890s, the competing small-diameter brown wax cylinder records were recorded at about 120 rpm and could play for as long as three minutes, although recordings fully that long were uncommon. At the end of the decade, cylinder record makers began a transition to higher speeds, mainly to produce louder-playing cylinders that could better compete with

2295-438: The spring of 1925 were not advertised as such; in order to create an extensive catalog of records made by the new process to satisfy anticipated demand, and to allow dealers time to liquidate their stocks of old-style Victrolas, Victor and its longtime rival, Columbia Records , agreed to keep electrical recording secret until the autumn of 1925. Then, with the company's largest advertising campaign to date, Victor publicly announced

2346-627: Was connected with the American Propeller Manufacturing Company , a manufacturer of aeronautical related mechanisms and products in Baltimore, Maryland. By 1910, Berliner was experimenting with the use of a vertically mounted tail rotor to counteract torque on his single-main-rotor design, a configuration that led to practical helicopters of the 1940s. The building used for these operations exists at 774 Girard Street NW, Washington, D.C., where its principal facade

2397-421: Was music becoming available over the air free of charge, but a live radio broadcast made using high-quality microphones and heard over amplified receivers provided sound that was startlingly more clear and realistic than a contemporary phonograph record. Victor was initially dismissive of the encroachments of radio, but after plummeting sales and much apathy and resistance from the company's senior executives brought

2448-511: Was once touted as the oldest commercial disc in the world, though this has since been disproven. The Kämmer & Reinhardt venture did not last very long, though just how long is unclear. In the early 1890s, Berliner attempted to found his first American company, the American Gramophone Company, in New York City, but it fell apart before issuing a single machine or disc. Back in Washington, D.C., Berliner tried again under

2499-413: Was re-recorded by another artist. Subsequent re-recordings are usually given a letter suffix, usually "Z-W" for early releases. Helpfully, the recording or matrix processing date is usually inscribed in the label area, but as Berliner did not employ paper labels sometimes the information is difficult to read. Many times the matrix numbers were reused to fit new records into the crumbling block system, such as

2550-535: Was undertaken in Germany in 1889 with the manufacturer Kämmer & Reinhardt  [ de ] , a maker of toys. The Kämmer & Reinhardt machine utilized 5" hard rubber discs, and some machines and discs were exported to England. An 1890 recording of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star , likely made by Berliner himself, is the oldest disc in the BBC Library or in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and

2601-521: Was wider than that available from cylinder companies in the 1890s. As may be expected, Berliner was well-supplied with the typical band and song selections commonly found on cylinders, but he also branched out into piano music, ragtime, speeches, sermons, instrumental solos and some ethnographic material on a greater scale than his competitors. From the beginning, Berliner's European subsidiaries were deeply invested in opera and classical music, only indirectly exploited by American cylinder companies, at least in

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