Victor Recording Company
| Victor Talking Machine Company | |
|---|---|
"His Master's Voice" logo with Nipper
|
|
| Founded | 1901 |
| Founder | Eldridge R. Johnson |
| Status | Absorbed by RCA in 1929 |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | U.S. |
| Location | Camden, New Jersey |
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American flagship record company headquartered in Camden, New Jersey.
The company was founded by Eldridge R. Johnson, who had previously made gramophones to play Emile Berliner's disc records. After a series of legal wranglings between Berliner, Johnson and their former business partners, the two joined to form the Consolidated Talking Machine Co. in order to combine the patents for the record with Johnson's patents improving its fidelity. Victor Talking Machine Co. was incorporated officially in 1901 shortly before agreeing to allow Columbia Records use of its disc record patent.
Victor had acquired the Pan-American rights to use the famous trademark of the fox terrier Nipper listening to a gramophone when Berliner and Johnson joined their fledgling companies. (See also His Master's Voice.) The original painting was an oil on canvas by Francis Barraud in 1898. Barraud's deceased brother, a London photographer, willed him his estate including his DC-powered Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph with a case of cylinders and his dog Nipper. Barraud's original depicts Nipper staring intently into the horn of an Edison-Bell while both sit on a polished wooden surface. The horn on the Edison-Bell machine was black and after a failed attempt at selling the painting to a cylinder record supplier of Edison Phonographs in the UK, a friend of Barraud's suggested that the painting could be brightened up (and possibly made more marketable) by substituting one of the brass-belled horns on display in the window at the new gramophone shop on Maiden Lane. The London branch was managed by an American, William Barry Owen. Barraud paid a visit with a photograph of the painting and asked to borrow a horn. Owen gave Barraud an entire gramophone and asked him to paint it into the picture, offering to buy the result. The original painting still shows the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph beneath the paint of the gramophone when viewed in the correct light. Only 13 originally commissioned "His Master's Voice" paintings were commissioned by the company and the original belongs to the archives at EMI (the successor company to Victor's partner in the United Kingdom).
In 1915, the "His Master's Voice" logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the Victrola factory building. The tower remains today with replica windows installed during Radio Corporation of America's ownership of the plant in its later years. Today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.
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