The Hicks-Stearns Family Museum is a Victorian historic house museum located on the town green in Tolland , Connecticut . The house was built in 1788, when it served as a tavern. It was occupied by the Hicks family from 1845 until 1970. Along with the Old Tolland County Jail and Museum , the Tolland County Courthouse , and the Daniel Benton Homestead , the Hicks-Stearns Family Museum is one of Tolland's four major landmarks.
33-457: The Hicks-Stearns family house is a transition home, featuring a colonial-era kitchen and a Victorian-era parlor and furnishings. Collections include family heirlooms, cloth tea balls, Victrola , and faux bamboo furniture. The house's original owner was Benoni Shepard, a Congregationalist deacon and Tolland's first postmaster. The museum hosts tours, concerts, and holiday programs from May through December. The house's most prominent resident
66-505: A London photographer, willed him his estate, including his DC-powered Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph with 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
99-653: A front porch and a distinctive three-story tower. When Ratcliffe Hicks died in 1906, his will established a trust (worth a quarter of his estate) to start a school of agriculture and forestry in Connecticut. The school opened in 1941 as part of the University of Connecticut . UConn's Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture and the Ratcliffe Hicks Building & Arena are named after him. Dedicated in 1951, UConn's Elizabeth Hicks Residence Hall
132-638: 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 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
165-532: A product inferior to the Gramophone, which he called the Zonophone and began solely marketing that instead of the gramophone. Berliner cancelled his contract with The National Gramophone Company, and in turn was sued for breach of contract. In 1900, the U.S. parent of Gramophone lost a patent infringement suit brought on by Columbia Records and Zonophone , and was no longer permitted to produce records in
198-476: 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,
231-483: Is a women's dormitory named after Ratcliffe's daughter, painter and philanthropist Elizabeth Hicks (1884-1974). Elizabeth willed the Tolland family home to a nonprofit trust to convert into a museum. 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
264-480: Is that Johnson's partner, Leon Douglass , derived the word from his wife's name 'Victoria.' Finally, 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,
297-522: The Library of Congress and Victor catalog owner Sony Music Entertainment launched the National Jukebox offering streaming audio of more than 10,000 pre-1925 recorded works for listening by the general public; the majority of these recordings have not been widely available for over 100 years. Gramophone Company The Gramophone Company Limited ( The Gramophone Co. Ltd. ), based in
330-437: The "Victor" name came about. RCA historian Fred Barnum gives various possible origins of 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
363-527: The 3-studio facility that would come to be known as EMI Recording Studios (and eventually Abbey Road Studios ) opened on 12 November 1931. In March 1931, Gramophone merged with the English Columbia Graphophone Company to form Electric and Musical Industries Ltd (EMI). The "Gramophone Company, Ltd." name, however, continued to be used for many decades, especially for copyright notices on records. Gramophone Company of India
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#1732780853181396-756: The Edison machine and substitute a Gramophone, which he did. In 1900, Emile Berliner acquired the US rights to the painting and it became the trademark of the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901; the UK rights were retained by the Gramophone Company. Victor utilized the Nipper trademark far more aggressively than the Gramophone Company, first using it on their record labels in 1902. Nipper
429-534: The Gramophone Company introduced new labels featuring the famous trademark known as " His Master's Voice ", generally referred to in the UK as HMV, to distinguish them from earlier labels which featured the Recording Angel trademark. The latter had been designed by Theodore Birnbaum, an executive of the Gramophone Company pressing plant in Hanover, Germany . While the general public in the UK came to refer to
462-718: 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)
495-652: The U.S. The agreement allowed Columbia to produce disc records themselves in the United States, which they began doing in 1901, with the UK Gramophone Company and others continuing to do so outside of the US. Emile Berliner established Berliner Gramophone in Montreal , where he became Victor's Canadian distributor and held the rights in Canada to the "His Master's Voice" trademark. In February 1909,
528-511: The UK into the 1970s. The Gramophone Company was founded in April 1898 by William Barry Owen and Edmund Trevor Lloyd Wynne Williams , commissioned by Emil Berliner, in London. Owen was acting as agent for Emile Berliner , inventor of the gramophone record , whilst Williams provided the finances. Most of the company's early discs were made in Hanover, Germany at a plant operated by members of Berliner's family, though it had operations around
561-403: The UK, a friend of Barraud's suggested that the painting could be brightened up (and possibly made more marketable) by substituting one of 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
594-782: The United Kingdom and founded by Emil Berliner , was one of the early recording companies , the parent organisation for the His Master's Voice (HMV) label, and the European affiliate of the American Victor Talking Machine Company . Although the company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931 to form Electric and Musical Industries Limited (EMI), its name "The Gramophone Company Limited" continued in
627-443: 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
660-483: 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
693-476: The dog lived from 1884 to 1895 and is honoured in England with a celebrated grave marker. In the mid-1920s, company chairman Trevor Osmond Williams approved funding for the company to secure property and build a recording studio, putting F. H. Dart from the company's technical recording department in charge of the project. Number 3 Abbey Road was acquired in 1929 and, after nearly 2 years of extensive renovations,
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#1732780853181726-557: 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
759-461: 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
792-562: The plant in its later years. Today, one of 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
825-526: The popular "Victrola" line of phonographs and the company's extensive catalog of operatic and classical music recordings by world famous artists on 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
858-478: The records and company as "His Master's Voice" or "HMV" because of the prominence of the phrase on the record labels, The Gramophone Company was never officially known as the HMV or His Master's Voice Company. The painting "His Master's Voice" was made in the 1890s with the dog Nipper listening to an Edison cylinder phonograph . In 1899, Owen bought the painting from Francis Barraud, the artist, and asked him to paint out
891-438: 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
924-660: The world. In 1898, Fred Gaisberg moved from the U.S. to London to set up the first disc recording studio in Europe; it was situated in Maiden Lane. Among early artists he recorded was Syria Lamont , an Australian soprano whose single "Coming through the Rye" was one of the first ever issued. In December 1900, Owen gained the manufacturing rights for the Lambert Typewriter Company , and the Gramophone Company
957-535: Was Ratcliffe Hicks (1843-1906), eldest son of Charles Hicks, a successful merchant from Providence, Rhode Island , and Maria Stearns. Ratcliffe was a Brown University graduate (1864), successful lawyer and industrialist (president of the Canfield Rubber Works in Bridgeport ), and Connecticut state legislator. Ratcliffe renovated and expanded the family house with many Victorian elements, adding
990-472: Was for a few years renamed the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd. This was an attempt to diversify the business model, in response to a series of lawsuits by Edison Bell . The Berliner Gramophone Company was hit the hardest with a lawsuit that involved a former employee, Frank Seaman. Berliner had hired Seaman, part of The National Gramophone Company, to handle the distribution of record players and disk as an exclusive sales agent. In secret, he started producing
1023-410: Was formed in 1946. The Gramophone Company Ltd legal entity was renamed EMI Records Ltd. in 1973. After EMI was acquired by Universal Music, the company was renamed to Parlophone Records Ltd. and taken over by Warner Music. From the 1890s to mid-1925, recordings were made without any electrical equipment, relying instead upon the energy inherent in the sound waves generated by the performers, to activate
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1056-421: 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
1089-598: Was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and became the RCA Victor Division of 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
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