Victrola

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Victrola , a brand name, registered on 1 December 1905 by Eldridge R. Johnson on behalf of the Victor Talking Machine Company for a variety of gramophones , in many different variants that over time the best known and most popular devices in the United States avancierten .

history

The name Victrola, registered on December 1, 1905 with the registration number 50081/2 on the part of the Victor Talking Machine Company, originally stood for a type of gramophone whose mechanical parts, including the bell, were integrated for the first time in an all-encompassing housing. There were also various storage options for the shellac records used at the time . There was a door on the front of the devices through which the volume could be influenced in a targeted manner by opening and closing. The patent rights for those innovations are held by Eldridge R. Johnson, who registered them on December 8, 1904 and was finally granted them on June 11, 1907 under the number US 856,704.

The market launch of the speaking machines took place on August 7, 1906 under the name "Victor Victrola", also known as "Victrola the Sixteenth" or "Model VV-XVI", which was simplified to Victrola a year later, in 1907. The increasing demand ultimately led to the fact that in 1910 a total of 40,000 stand models could be sold. In addition to these, various table models were available from 1911, with sales of 50,000 devices one year after their introduction to the phonographic market. Both types were delivered either with spring or electric drive.

In 1920, the joint sale of both types of devices reached its maximum with 333,889 speaking machines, of which 212,363 table models found their way to customers. The emerging competition, through the newly invented and slowly establishing radio , caused severe sales losses two years later, in 1922, which in turn led to the temporary shutdown of the production of "Victrolas" two years later, in 1924, but only for one year So that in 1925 production could be resumed with newly designed devices under the name "Victor Orthophonic Victrola". Another innovation, the introduction of electrical recording technology in the same year, prompted Victor to adjust the model again, as the sound of the old devices did not take into account the new possibilities. In this context, the company announced in the middle of 1925 that it would offer a new gramophone, the “Victor Orthophonic Credenza”, as a “problem solution”, in combination with the sale of the previous models at half price. On November 2, 1925, "Victor Day", those new speaking machines were presented for the first time in parallel throughout the United States, as a result of which Victor was able to record a sharp increase in sales for that market segment. In the year of introduction, 42,446 devices were sold, with a continuous increase to 260,436 devices in 1927.

See also

Payola scandal

literature

  • Hoffmann, Frank W. & Ferstler, Howard: Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound ,; Routledge, London 2005, ISBN 978-0-415-93835-8 .
  • Thom Holmes: The Routledge Guide to Music Technology ; Routledge, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-97323-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ER Johnson: Talking Machine. (pdf) June 11, 1907, accessed on February 5, 2018 (English, original patent specification).