Eldridge R. Johnson
| Eldridge R. Johnson | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Eldridge Reeves Johnson February 6, 1867 Wilmington, Delaware |
| Died |
November 14, 1945 (aged 78) Moorestown, New Jersey |
| Spouse(s) | Elsie Reeves Fenimore Johnson |
| Children | Fen Johnson |
| Parent(s) |
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Eldridge Reeves Johnson (February 6, 1867 in Wilmington, Delaware – November 14, 1945 in Moorestown, New Jersey) founded the Victor Talking Machine Company and built it into the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time.
Johnson was born in Wilmington, Delaware on February 18, 1867 to Asa S. Johnson and Caroline Reeves Johnson. Upon his mother’s death in 1869 he was sent to live with his mother’s sister and her husband on their farm in northern Kent County near Smyrna.
Asa remarried, and at age ten young Johnson moved to Dover to live with his father and stepmother. Johnson attended the Delaware Academy with the hopes of attending college, but he was a poor student and upon his graduation in 1882 at fifteen, the Academy’s director told him “you are too God damned dumb to go to college. Go and learn a trade.”
Thus, in 1883 Johnson was apprenticed to J. Lodge & Son, a machine repair shop in Philadelphia. In 1888, his apprenticeship was completed and Johnson became a machinist at the recently established Scull Machine Shop in Camden, New Jersey. John Warwick Scull had graduated from Lehigh University the previous year with a degree in mechanical engineering, and his father Andrew financed the purchase of the building at 108 N. Front Street in Camden for his son to set up shop in.
Later that year, John W. Scull died suddenly. Johnson became foreman and manager, while Scull's father continued on as owner. At the time of his death, John W. Scull had been working on the development of a bookbinding machine. Johnson completed the design of the machine but shortly thereafter decided to head west to seek his fortune. He ultimately made it as far west as Washington State, but the work Johnson found in the west was as a manual laborer. By 1891 he had returned to Philadelphia.
During Johnson’s absence, Scull had been unable to successfully market the bookbinding machine. Upon Johnson’s return east, Scull proposed a partnership. In 1894, Johnson bought out Scull’s share of the company and the Eldridge R. Johnson Manufacturing Company was born.
In addition to the manufacture of wire stitching and bookbinding machines, Johnson’s shop executed a variety of smaller jobs involving steam models and machine alterations. A customer named Henry Whitaker brought a manually driven, hand-cranked Berliner Gramophone, developed by Emile Berliner, into Johnson’s shop and asked Johnson to design a spring driven motor for it. Johnson did so, but Whitaker found the result unsatisfactory.
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