Carl Lindström
Carl Elof Lindström (born June 26, 1869 in Södertälje , † December 29, 1932 in Berlin ) was a Swedish mechanic and industrialist . He created in Germany one of the first internationally operating and temporarily largest European records - corporations whose technical director he was until 1,921th
The beginnings
Lindström, son of the wagon axle manufacturer Franz Oskar Lindström, left his homeland in 1892 and, after a stay in Stettin, founded a mechanical workshop in Berlin in 1897, which soon concentrated on the production of phonographs . In addition, the company provided voice recorders branded Parlograph ago. Together with Paul Pfeiffer, Lindström constructed the lyre phonograph in 1896 and produced the ideal phonograph, a machine for recording and playback. Lindström brought out his first apparatus for playing records based on the principle of the gramophone by Emil Berliner under the name Lynophone .
Carl Lindström AG
The workshop became an industrial enterprise when the financially strong bankers Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz founded Carl Lindström GmbH together with Lindström in 1904 . They had not been very successful with their "Salon-Kinematograph Co.mbH", founded in 1902 and producing film projectors for domestic use. Straus and Zuntz had previously sold mechanical turntables from the Lindström workshops under the Parlophon brand , whose name was expanded to include an "e" for Parlophone for international business . In 1908 the GmbH was converted into a stock corporation for the purpose of raising capital . Zuntz died in 1906 and was replaced by his brother-in-law Otto KE Heinemann, who emigrated to the USA in 1914 and founded the Okeh record company there. CEO Max Straus had to switch to the supervisory board in 1933 and emigrate to England in 1936.
When the record became more and more popular, 150,000 gramophones left the factory in 1906 . Lindström patented numerous further developments in speech machine technology; but whether he is rightly considered the inventor of the gramophone with a moveable tonearm and permanently mounted funnel is doubtful. His company brought it onto the market in 1905 as the "Record record apparatus". In 1910 the tonearms were given a folding handle with which the tonearm could be put back to protect the record after playing. In 1913 Lindström brought out a record player with a record changer under the name "Miracle" .
Europe's largest record producer
The company set up recording studios and in 1911, together with the International Talking Machine Company, acquired the record brand Odeon , the symbol of which, the Odeon Temple, was one of the most famous logos of the pre-war shellac era . With the other rights and trademarks of the company such as Jumbo , Jumbola , Fonotipia and the Beka brand and shares in other companies (1913 takeover of Grünbaum & Thomas AG , Lyraphon , Dacapo and Favorit ), Lindström advanced to become the largest record producer (“record king ”) the European continent. Pressing plants were also operated outside of Europe and in South America; In 1925, the Berlin parent company alone produced around 150,000 records and 1,000 speaking machines per day. The AG also participated in Ufa . Further subsidiaries were Kristall-Schallplatten-GmbH with the brands Kristall and Imperial (founded from 1936/1937) and Frey Radio-GmbH.
In 1926, the majority of Lindström AG was acquired by British Columbia . This enabled Lindström AG to use the electrical recording process that had recently been brought to market in the USA and revolutionized the record industry: Columbia brought the rights to it into the company. In 1931 the company went into the EMI group.
The company's founder died in 1932. Carl Lindström found his final resting place in the churchyard of the Protestant Laurentius congregation in Köpenick .
The company's path after Lindström's death
In 1936 the company transferred the gramophone production to the newly founded subsidiary "Brandenburgische Metallverektiven-GmbH". During the Second World War , the National Socialists placed the company under what is known as enemy property management because of its major British shareholder. At the end of the war, the Allies took control. Despite severe war damage, the factory located in the American sector was able to resume production of records and turntables just a few months after the end of the war. In 1951 it was converted back into a GmbH, two years later the headquarters moved to Cologne-Braunsfeld . Until 1972 branches of EMI continued to carry the name Carl Lindström. Then Electrola GmbH and Carl Lindström GmbH were merged to form EMI Electrola GmbH.
literature
- Alfred Gutmann (Ed.): 25 years of Lindström 1904–1929. Berlin 1929.
- Horst Wahl, Hansfried Sieben: Odeon, the history of a record company. Sieben, Düsseldorf 1986.
- Rainer E. Lotz: Carl Lindström and the Carl Lindström Aktiengesellschaft. (PDF; 1.7 MB) Retrieved on August 5, 2009 (via Lindström and Electrola / EMI).
Web links
- The Lindström project of the Society for Historic Sound Carriers
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Carl Lindström AG in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Phonographic Journal 01/1933
- ↑ Cf. Rainer E. Lotz, Carl Lindström and the Carl Lindström Aktiengesellschaft, introductory lecture for the 9th Discografentag, Immenstadt 2008, p. 7.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lindström, Carl |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lindström, Carl Elof (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish mechanic and industrialist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 26, 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Södertälje |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 29, 1932 |
| Place of death | Berlin |