Berlin gramophones
| Berlin gramophones | |
|---|---|
| Active years | 1893-1900 |
| founder | Emile Berliner |
| Seat | Washington, DC, United States |
Berliner Gramophone was the first and for almost ten years the only music label in the world. It was founded by Emil Berliner in the United States , based in Washington, DC Berliner's records - recognizable by the etched logo “E. Berliner's Gramophone “- were played on his invention, the gramophone . This competed with the phonograph and its phonograph cylinders , which were more frequently used in the 1890s .
history
On November 8, 1887 and May 15, 1888, Emile Berliner received patents 372,786 and 382,790 in the United States for the gramophone he had invented. This was before the founding of the North American Phonograph Company , which was the first to produce recordings on phonograph cylinders for private use. This means that the Berliner record was made around the same time as the phonograph cylinder. However, it took Berliner longer to start producing his records in the United States.
First, in 1889, Berliner founded a joint venture with the toy manufacturer Kämmer & Reinhardt to produce records in Germany , but this did not last long. The production at Kämmer & Reinhardt was done with 5-inch hard rubber records . Some of the gramophones and records produced were exported to England. A record by Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star from 1890, which was probably made by Berliner himself, is the oldest record in the BBC Library and for some time was called the oldest record in the world, which has since been refuted.
In the early 1890s, Berliner founded his first American company, the American Gramophone Company, in New York City . This disintegrated before producing a single gramophone or record. In Washington, DC, in 1893, Berliner founded a new company, the United States Gramophone Company, and began producing gramophones and 7-inch hard rubber-based records in 1894. In addition, some celluloid records were made. In 1895, the Berlin-based Gramophone replaced the hard rubber with a shellac mixture, which remained the standard recording material in various formulations until the first vinyl records - originally intended only for radio and other special uses - were made in the 1930s. Beginning in 1896, the Berliners gramophones were made by Philadelphia- based machine builder Eldridge Johnson , who added a spring drive to drive the previously hand-operated turntable. At this point in time, Berliner opened another company in New York City under the name National Gramophone Company , with Frank Seaman and OD LaDow as executive employees. A setback for Berliner's endeavors came on September 29, 1897 when its manufacturing facility in Washington, DC burned down and one hundred unpublished zinc record masters and all of its record-making equipment were destroyed. Berliner was ready for production again within a few months, with some areas of his record production being relocated to Philadelphia.
As the popularity of the gramophone increased, Emile Berliner had to deal with several violations of his patents. In 1898, Berliner achieved the closure of at least two companies that copied its business model and products. In 1899, Berliner discovered that Frank Seaman, his colleague in New York, was the manufacturer and seller of a device called the Zonophone, which appeared to be an exact replica of the gramophone. Angry, Berliner cut off all deliveries to the New York company, which turned out to be a fatal error. Seaman sued Berliner for breach of contract and in June 1900 the court issued an injunction against Berliner and his United States Gramophone Company . Although he later tried in several proceedings to overturn the injunction , it was approved and this forced Emile Berliner to get out of the gramophone business in America. In 1900, Berliner transferred his patents to Eldridge Johnson, who incorporated them into a new company in which Berliner retained a stake. In March 1901, Johnson registered the company name as Victor Talking Machine Company and began selling under that brand at the end of the year. By 1905 his company had regained leadership in the American record business.
Foreign subsidiaries
Although the partnership with Kämmer & Reinhardt in Germany had long ended, Berliner still held patents there, as well as in England.
In 1895, comedian Billy Golden introduced Emile Berliner to Fred Gaisberg . Gaisberg and Barry Peter Owen - a trustworthy employee within the National Gramophone Company - supported Berliners in founding their foreign subsidiaries.
1898 founded Owen a subsidiary Berliner in England, the name Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd received. In 1931, this was one of the companies that became EMI .
In the same year Gaisberg founded the German subsidiary of Berliner as Deutsche Grammophon . This was the record company that existed the longest under its own name until it was taken over by the Universal Music Group in 1999 .
In 1901 Gaisberg also founded a subsidiary of Berliners in St. Petersburg , Russia .
A subsidiary in Canada was founded in 1899 by Berliner's sons Herbert and Edgar. It was first located in the Northern Electric building on Aqueduct Street in Montreal and began selling records and gramophones the following year. In 1904, the company received its charter as the Berlin Gram-o-phone Company of Canada . Initially, the records were imported from the United States until a separate recording studio was founded in Montreal in 1906. The name Berliner as a record label lasted the longest in Canada. In 1918, Emile Berliner's son Herbert Berliner left Berlin's Gram-o-phone and founded the Compo Company . Herbert's younger brother, Edgar, remained managing director of the Berlin Gram-o-phone Company of Canada . In 1924, the Canadian subsidiary Berliners was bought by the US company Victor and became the Victor Talking Machine Company of Canada. Emile Berliner died in 1929 - in the same year RCA bought the Victor Talking Machine Company and in 1930 Edgar Berliner left the Canadian RCA. The Berlin Gram-o-phone building in Montreal, a complex of buildings at 1001 rue Lenoir and 1050 rue LaCasse in the St-Henri district, became the home of RCA Victor Canada in the following decades and developed and produced high-tech products such as broadcast systems, communications satellites, and television broadcast accessories. Since the sale of RCA Victor to General Electric in 1986, the building on Rue Lenoir has been converted into a multifunctional office / commercial building. The building on Rue LaCasse is now home to the Musée des ondes Emile Berliner , in which the history of Berliners, his company and the building complex is documented. The historic RCA Victor studio that is located there is still an active recording studio.
Range of music production
The range of records sold by Berliner Gramophone was wider than that offered by phonograph companies in the 1890s. Berliner was well supplied with the range of bands and songs that could usually be found on phonograph cylinders. But he offered piano music , ragtime , speeches , sermons , instrumental solos and ethnographic material to a greater extent than his competitors. From the beginning, the European companies sold Berliners operas and classical music , which the American phonograph companies did not do until the 1890s.
Artist at Berliner Grammophone
The artists who published their works on Berliner Grammophone included:
- Auguste Aramini
- John Yorke Atlee
- Buffalo Bill
- Albert Campbell
- George Club
- Arthur Collins
- Cousins and DeMoss
- Cullen and Collins
- Charles D'Almaine
- Will F. Denny
- Diamond quartets
- HH Dudley
- Edward M. Favor
- George J. Gaskin
- Billy Golden
- George Graham
- Graus Mountain Choir
- Lil Hawthorne
- Russell Hunting
- George W. Johnson
- Dwight L. Moody
- Vess L. Ossman
- Arthur Pryor
- Dan W. Quinn
- Len Spencer
- Sousa's band
- US Navy Band
Documentation of the musical heritage
Documenting the music production of the American Berlin gramophones has proven to be a daunting task. On the one hand, the original records are rare and difficult to access collector's items. On the other hand, the Berlin Gramophone used a system of block numbering for their catalog, which made little sense and makes subsequent documentation more difficult.
In 2014, the EMI Archive Trust started an online initiative that collects information on records from Berlin's gramophones worldwide . The EMI Archive Trust with 18,000 copies has the largest collection of records of the Berliner Gramophone in one place. They were largely collected by Fred Gaisberg in the company's early years.
Another large number of records from the Canadian Berlin gramophones are kept by the National Library of Canada , which has set up a "virtual gramophone" on the Internet to provide access to the records. Her focus is mainly on Canadian artists.
See also
literature
- Martin F. Bryan: Report to the Phonothèque Québécoise on the Search for Archival Documents of Berliner Gram-O-Phone Co., Victor Talking Machine Co., RCA Victor Co. (Montréal), 1899-1972 . Phonothèque Québécoise, 1994.
Web links
- The History of the Record. Emil Berliner Studios
- The Berlin Project. EMI Archive Trust
- Berlin master records in the Discography of American Historical Recordings
- Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry in the Library of Congress
Individual evidence
- ^ Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry. Retrieved November 7, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry - The Gramophone. Retrieved November 7, 2017 .
- ^ North American Phonograph Company. Retrieved November 7, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry - Timeline. Retrieved November 7, 2017 .
- ^ Norris McWhirter and Ross McWhirter: The Guinness Book of World Records 1974 . Ed .: Edition Bantam Books. Bantam Books, 1974.
- ^ Raymond Wile: Etching the Human Voice: The Berliner Invention of the Gramophone . In: ARSC Journal . tape 21/1 , 1990.
- ↑ The Transcription Disc. Retrieved November 7, 2017 .
- ^ Roland Gelatt: The Fabulous Phonograph . 2nd Edition. MacMillan Publishing Company, 1977.
- ^ Jerrold Northrop Moore: Sound Revolutions: A Biography of Fred Gaisberg, Founding Father of Commercial Sound Recording . 2nd Edition. Sanctuary Publishing, 1999.
- ^ A b History of Canadian record companies. Retrieved November 10, 2017 .
- ^ Compo Company Ltd. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
- ^ RCA Victor Records - History of Recorded Sound in Canada. Retrieved November 10, 2017 .
- ^ Musée des ondes Emile Berliner Montréal, Quebec - Du gramophone au satellite. Retrieved November 10, 2017 .
- ^ Studio VICTOR 3.0. Retrieved November 10, 2017 (French).
- ^ A b Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry - The Berliner Recordings. Retrieved November 13, 2017 .
- ↑ Berlin numerical listing. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
- ^ EMI Archive Trust - The Berliner Project. Retrieved November 13, 2017 .
- ↑ Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings. Retrieved November 13, 2017 .