Pathé Records
Pathé Records was a French record company and manufacturer of phonographs founded by brothers Charles Pathé and Émile Pathé in 1894. The hallmark on the label was a rooster.
The Pathé brothers were originally bistro owners and recorded music on phonograph cylinders through their company with studios in Paris, Milan, London and St. Petersburg. In addition, they were film pioneers with a well-known news service in France and England (Pathé News, from 1908 and 1910 respectively), see Pathé .
From 1905 they also produced panels, first with wax on a cement primer, from 1906 as shellac . In contrast to other companies, the musical information was cut vertically instead of laterally into the record (similar to Edison's back then). The grooves were wider than usual and the rotational speed was different (90 rpm , in 1916 they switched to 80 rpm). There were disks with a diameter of 10 inches , 10.5 / 11.5 / 6.5 / 8/14 and 20 inches (the latter with 120 rpm). They were the first record company to record master records in a different medium (fast rotating cylinder wax rolls) than the actual records. Special phonographs from the company were required for playback, which in turn had accessories in order to play horizontally cut records.
The Pathé brothers were particularly successful with their cylinder rollers in France, but their records found wider distribution, for example in the USA (from 1914) and even in Asia (Pathé Orient). In 1922 they founded the cheaper sub-label Perfect .
It was not until 1920 that they introduced laterally cut plates, initially as Pathé Actuelle only for the USA. Soon after, however, they also sold more of them in Europe than of the originally vertically cut panels, which were sold in France until the early 1930s.
In 1924 the business outside the USA was sold to Marconi. In 1928 these were taken over by Columbia Records (then Columbia Graphophone Company), which in 1931 became EMI . The sub-label Pathé was continued there (partly as Pathé Marconi). The film division still exists in France as an independent company.
The US business went to the Cameo Recording Company in 1927, which was merged into the American Record Corporation in 1929. Around 1930, the Pathé label disappeared from the US market.