1.
Berliner Gramophone
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Berliner Gramophone – its discs identified with an etched-in E. Berliners Gramophone as the logo – was the first disc record label in the world. Its records were played on Emile Berliners invention, the Gramophone, Emile Berliner received US patents 372,786 and 382,790 on the Gramophone on November 8,1887 and May 15,1888 respectively. Berliners first joint venture was undertaken in Germany in 1889 with the manufacturer Kammer & Reinhardt, the Kammer & Reinhardt machine utilized 5-inch hard rubber discs, and some machines and discs were exported to England. The Kammer & Reinhardt venture did not last very long, though just how long is unclear. In the early 1890s, Berliner attempted to found his first American company, the American Gramophone Company, in New York City, Berliner tried again under the name of the United States Gramophone Company and began to manufacture machines and 7-inch hard rubber discs in 1894. Some celluloid discs were also made, beginning in 1896, Berliners gramophones were made by Philadelphia-based machinist Eldridge Johnson, who added a spring motor to drive the previously hand-rotated turntable. Berliner also opened an office in New York City, staffed by Frank Seaman, laDow and organized as the National Gramophone Company. Master recordings were made onto zinc plates, which were then electroplated, within a few months, however, Berliner was up and rolling again, with some record production aspects moved to Philadelphia. Only about two minutes could comfortably fit on each single-sided 7-inch disc, the absolute maximum depended on the speed, which was not standardized and ranged from about 75 rpm to a more typical 70 rpm down to as slow as 60 rpm. A new standard cylinder speed of 160 rpm was soon established, as the popularity of the gramophone began to pick up, Berliner found himself having to deal with infringers on his patents. In 1898, Berliner shut down at least two firms that were leeching off his business models and, in the first case, products, in 1899, Berliner discovered that Frank Seaman was behind a machine called the Zonophone that seemed an exact replica of the Gramophone. Furious, Berliner cut off all supply to New York, which proved a fatal error, Seaman countersued for breach of contract, and in June 1900 the court granted an injunction against Berliner and United States Gramophone Company. Though he would attempt in several proceedings afterward to have the injunction overturned, it was allowed to stand, Berliner transferred his patents to Eldridge Johnson, who then changed the name over the door to his own, though Berliner retained a share in the new company. In March 1901, Johnson registered the name Victor Talking Machine Company, by 1905 it had regained the lead in the American disc record business, while by 1906 Seamans Zonophone was on a receivers index. Although the German partnership with Kammer and Reinhardt had long ended, Berliner still held patents in Germany and England. In 1898, Owen founded the Berliner subsidiary in England which eventually took the name of Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd. in 1931, Gaisberg also founded a Berliner subsidiary in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1901. E. Berliner Gramophone of Canada was established in 1899 and it was first located in the Aqueduct Street building of Northern Electric in Montreal, and commenced marketing records and gramophones the following year. In 1904, the received its charter as the Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada
2.
Emile Berliner
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Emile Berliner, originally Emil Berliner, was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for inventing the flat disc phonograph record, Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851 into a Jewish merchant family. Though raised in a Jewish family, he became an agnostic. He completed an apprenticeship to become a merchant, as was family tradition, while his real hobby was invention, he worked as an accountant to make ends meet. To avoid being drafted for the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner migrated to the United States of America in 1870 with a friend of his fathers, in whose shop he worked in Washington, D. C. He moved to New York and, living off temporary work, such as doing the paper route and cleaning bottles, after some time working in a livery stable, he became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph, and invented an improved telephone transmitter. The patent was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company, in America, Thomas Edison and Berliner fought a long legal battle over the patent rights. Berliner subsequently moved to Boston in 1877 and worked for Bell Telephone until 1883, emile Berliner became a United States citizen in 1881. Berliner also invented what was probably the first radial engine, a helicopter. In 1886 Berliner began experimenting with methods of sound recording and he was granted his first patent for what he called the Gramophone in 1887. By 1890 a Berliner licensee in Germany was manufacturing a toy Gramophone and five-inch hard rubber discs, but because key US patents were still pending they were sold only in Europe. Berliner meant his Gramophone to be more than a mere toy and he began marketing seven-inch records and a more substantial Gramophone, which was, however, still hand-propelled like the smaller toy machine. The difficulty in using early hand-driven Gramophones was getting the turntable to rotate at a steady speed while playing a disc. The US Berliner Gramophone Company shut down in mid-1900 and Berliner moved to Canada, the Berliner Gramophone Co. of Canada was chartered on 8 April 1904 and reorganized as the Berliner Gramophone Co. in 1909 in Montreals district Saint Henri. Berliners other inventions include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth, a tile. Moore, also a Scientist and Inventor, as his assistant, Berliner obtained automobile engines from the Adams Company in Dubuque Iowa. This car used air cooled three or five cylinder rotary engines which were developed in-house by Fay Oliver Farwell, Berliner and Farwell adapted them for use in perfecting “machines” produced for vertical flight. His realizations allowed him to move away from the heavy in-line engines to lighter rotary models and it was these experiments that led to the formal creation of the Gyro Motor Company in 1909
3.
His Master's Voice
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His Masters Voice, abbreviated HMV, is a famous trademark in the music and recording industry and was for many years the unofficial name of a large British record label. The name was coined in the 1890s as the title of a painting of a dog named Nipper, in the original painting, the dog was listening to a cylinder phonograph. The trademark image comes from a painting by English artist Francis Barraud and it was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly formed Gramophone Company and adopted by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the United States. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a terrier named Nipper, had belonged to Barrauds brother. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, with a cylinder phonograph, Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the horn, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas. In early 1899, Francis Barraud applied for copyright of the painting using the descriptive working title Dog looking at. The image was first used on the companys catalogue dated December 1899, Victor used the image more aggressively than its UK partner, and from 1902 most Victor records had a simplified drawing of Barrauds dog-and-gramophone image on their labels. Magazine advertisements urged record buyers to look for the dog, in British Commonwealth countries, the Gramophone Company did not use the dog on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the half of the record labels with the Nipper logo. The company was not formally called HMV or His Masters Voice, Records issued by the company before February 1908 were generally referred to as G&Ts, while those after that date are usually called HMV records. This image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the U. S. Canada, and Latin America, and then by Victors successor, in Commonwealth countries it was used by subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI. The trademarks ownership is divided among different companies in different countries, the name HMV is used by a chain of music shops owned by HMV, mainly in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan. In 1921 the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London, in 1929 RCA absorbed Victor, and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company, which Victor had owned since 1920. In 1931 RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI, which continued to own the His Masters Voice name, in 1935 RCA sold its stake in EMI but continued to own Victor and the rights to His Masters Voice in the Americas. HMV continued to distribute RCA recordings until RCA severed its ties with EMI in 1957, RCA Victors Japanese subsidiary, the Victor Company of Japan, became independent, and today they still use the Victor brand and Nipper in Japan only. In 1968, RCA introduced a logo and restricted the use of Nipper to the album covers of Red Seal Records. The trademark was reinstated to most RCA record labels in the Western Hemisphere beginning in late 1976 and was again widely used in RCA advertising throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. The dog reappeared for a time on RCA television sets and was used on the RCA CED videodisc system
4.
Victor Talking Machine Company
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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 Berliners disc records, 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 trademark of the fox terrier Nipper listening to a gramophone when Berliner. Barraud noticed that whenever he played a recorded by his brother. Barrauds original depicts Nipper staring intently into the horn of an Edison-Bell while both sit on a wooden surface. 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, 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 Masters Voice paintings were commissioned by the company, in 1915, the His Masters 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 Americas ownership of the plant in its later years, today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D. C. There are different accounts as to how the Victor name came about, a second account is that Johnson emerged as the Victor from the lengthy and costly patent litigations involving Berliner and Frank Seamans Zonophone. A third story is that Johnsons partner, Leon Douglass, derived the word from his wifes name Victoria, finally, a fourth story is that Johnson took the name from the popular Victor bicycle, which he had admired for its superior engineering. Of these four accounts the first two are the most generally accepted, perhaps coincidentally, the first use of the Victor title on a letterhead, on March 28,1901, was only nine weeks after the death of British Queen Victoria. Before 1925, recording was done by the purely mechanical. No microphone was involved and there was no means of amplification, the recording machine was essentially an exposed-horn acoustical record player functioning in reverse. The sound-vibrated center of the diaphragm was linked to a stylus that was guided across the surface of a very thick wax disc. The wax was too soft to be played back even once without seriously damaging it, although test recordings were sometimes made, although sound quality was gradually improved by a series of small refinements, the process was inherently insensitive. From the start, Victor innovated manufacturing processes and soon rose to preeminence by recording famous performers, in 1903, it instituted a three-step mother-stamper process to produce more stampers and records than previously possible. These new celebrity recordings bore red labels, and were marketed as Red Seal records, for many years these records were single-sided, only in 1923 did Victor begin offering Red Seals in double-sided form
5.
Columbia Graphophone Company
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The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. As Columbia Records, it became a label in the 1950s and 1960s. This in turn was absorbed by the Parlophone Records unit of Warner Music Group, in 1922, Columbia Phonograph, as the American Columbia Records was then known, sold its UK subsidiary Columbia Graphophone. However, in 1925 Columbia Graphophone bought its former parent for $2.5 million, in 1926 Odeon Records and Parlophone Records were acquired. On 21 April 1931, the Gramophone Company and the Columbia Graphophone Company merged and formed a new company, Electric, American anti-trust laws forced EMI to sell its American Columbia operations. Under EMI, English Columbias output was mainly licenced recordings from American Columbia until 1951 when American Columbia switched British distribution to Philips Records, led by avuncular A&R man Norrie Paramor, the label was arguably the most successful in Britain in the rock era prior to the beat boom. In the mid 1960s, English Columbia added an audiophile imprint called Studio 2 Stereo, during that time, the Columbia Graphophone Company was absorbed into the Gramophone Company with the label maintaining its identity. EMI has engaged in litigation with CBS regarding the importing of American records bearing the Columbia imprint into areas where EMI owned the Columbia name, EMI decided to reserve the HMV label for classical repertoire and had transferred HMVs remaining pop acts to Columbia and Parlophone by 1967. EMI began to replace the Columbia label with the eponymous EMI Records in January 1973, the last Columbia single was issued in 1989. EMI sold its remaining interest in the Columbia name in 1990 to Sony Music Entertainment, the formal reassignment of British registered trade marks, including the magic notes logo, from EMI took place in 1993. Today, Sony Music prefers using the eye logo for the Columbia Records trade mark in the UK. However, the magic notes logo is used, usually to give a retro feel. The Columbia name was still on some EMI releases between 1973 and 1990, but it had ceased acting as a fully functioning label. In Australia and Germany, EMI continued using the Columbia label throughout the 1970s and to at least 1980, through its ownership of the former Columbia/EMI catalogue, Parlophone Records new owner Warner Music Group assumed Columbias artist roster and catalogue. New reissues bear the Parlophone imprint
6.
EMI
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EMI was a British multinational conglomerate founded in March 1931 and was based in London. At the time of its break-up in 2012, it was the fourth-largest business group and its EMI Records Ltd. group of record labels included EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records and Capitol Records. EMI also had a publishing arm, EMI Music Publishing—also based in London with offices globally. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE100 Index, other members of the Sony consortium include the Estate of Michael Jackson, The Blackstone Group, and Abu Dhabi–owned investment fund Mubadala Development Company. The new vertically integrated company produced sound recordings as well as recording, the companys gramophone manufacturing led to forty years of success with larger-scale electronics and electrical engineering. He was killed in 1942 whilst conducting flight trials on an experimental H2S radar set, post-war, the company resumed its involvement in making broadcasting equipment, notably providing the BBCs second television transmitter at Sutton Coldfield. It also manufactured broadcast television cameras for British television production companies as well as for the BBC, the commercial television ITV companies also used them alongside cameras made by Pye and Marconi. Exports of this piece of equipment were low, however, the company was also for many years an internationally respected manufacturer of photomultipliers. This part of the business was transferred to Thorn as part of Thorn-EMI, in 1958 the EMIDEC1100, the UKs first commercially available all-transistor computer, was developed at Hayes under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield, an electrical engineer at EMI. In 1973 EMI was awarded a prestigious Queens Award for Technological Innovation for what was called the EMI scanner. After brief, but brilliant, success in the imaging field, EMIs manufacturing activities were sold off to other companies. Subsequently, development and manufacturing activities were sold off to companies and work moved to other towns such as Crawley. Emihus Electronics, based in Glenrothes, Scotland, was owned 51% by Hughes Aircraft, of California, US and it manufactured integrated circuits electrolytic capacitors and, for a short period in the mid-1970s, hand-held calculators under the Gemini name. Early in its life, the Gramophone Company established subsidiary operations in a number of countries in the British Commonwealth, including India, Australia. Over 150,000 78-rpm recordings from around the world are held in EMIs temperature-controlled archive in Hayes, in 1931, the year the company was formed, it opened the legendary recording studios at Abbey Road, London. During the 1930s and 1940s, its roster of artists included Arturo Toscanini, Sir Edward Elgar, during this time EMI appointed its first A&R managers. These included George Martin, who brought the Beatles into the EMI fold. When the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931, at this point RCA had a majority shareholding in the new company, giving RCA chair David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board
7.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
8.
Hanover
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At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Electorate was enlarged to become a Kingdom with Hanover as its capital. From 1868 to 1946 Hanover was the capital of the Prussian Province of Hanover and it is now the capital of the Land of Lower Saxony. Since 2001 it has been part of the Hanover district, which is a body made up from the former district. With a population of 518,000, Hanover is a centre of Northern Germany. Hanover also hosts annual commercial trade fairs such as the Hanover Fair, every year Hanover hosts the Schützenfest Hannover, the worlds largest marksmens festival, and the Oktoberfest Hannover, the second largest such festival in Germany. In 2000, Hanover hosted the world fair Expo 2000, the Hanover fairground, due to numerous extensions, especially for the Expo 2000, is the largest in the world. Hanover is of importance because of its universities and medical school, its international airport. The city is also a crossing point of railway lines and highways. Hanover is the traditional English spelling, the German spelling is becoming more popular in English, recent editions of encyclopaedias prefer the German spelling, and the local government uses the German spelling on English websites. The traditional English spelling is used in historical contexts, especially when referring to the British House of Hanover. Hanover was founded in times on the east bank of the River Leine. Its original name Honovere may mean high bank, though this is debated, Hanover was a small village of ferrymen and fishermen that became a comparatively large town in the 13th century due to its position at a natural crossroads. As overland travel was difficult, its position on the upper navigable reaches of the river helped it to grow by increasing trade. In the 14th century the churches of Hanover were built. The beginning of industrialization in Germany led to trade in iron and silver from the northern Harz Mountains, in 1636 George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, ruler of the Brunswick-Lüneburg principality of Calenberg, moved his residence to Hanover. The Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg were elevated by the Holy Roman Emperor to the rank of Prince-Elector in 1692, thus the principality was upgraded to the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, colloquially known as the Electorate of Hanover after Calenbergs capital. Its electors would later become monarchs of Great Britain, the first of these was George I Louis, who acceded to the British throne in 1714. The last British monarch who ruled in Hanover was William IV, semi-Salic law, which required succession by the male line if possible, forbade the accession of Queen Victoria in Hanover
9.
Fred Gaisberg
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Frederick William Gaisberg was an American-born musician, recording engineer and one of the earliest classical music producers for the gramophone. He himself did not use the term producer, and was not an impresario like his protégé Walter Legge of EMI or an innovator like John Culshaw of Decca, Gaisberg concentrated on talent-scouting and persuading performers to make recordings for the newly invented gramophone. Gaisberg began working in the industry in America as a young man, becoming a pioneer of early recording. In 1898, he joined the Gramophone Company in England as its first recording engineer, in 1902, he recorded music sung by the tenor Enrico Caruso and the recordings became a sensation. By 1921, Gaisberg was artistic director of HMVs international artistes department, after 1925, he concentrated on artist management. In 1939, he retired from his position but continued as a consultant in the industry through the 1940s, Gaisberg was born in Washington, DC. His father Wilhelm was the son of German immigrants, Gaisberg was educated in Washington and was a chorister at St. Johns Episcopal Church. A musically talented youngster, he encountered the fledgling recording technology in the early 1890s, poor sound quality and short playing time, however, meant that recordings were more of an amusing novelty than a serious means of reproducing music. In this decade the first of the recording industrys format wars was taking place, Gaisberg played an important role in this war, helping to establish 78 revolutions per minute as the standard playing speed and shellac as the standard material for making discs. In 1898, the Gramophone Company was formed in London, Gaisberg, by then working as piano accompanist and recording supervisor for Emile Berliner, left New York for London to join the Gramophone Company as its first recording engineer. He landed in Liverpool with recording outfit, a $25 bicycle, among his first recordings in London were several made by Syria Lamonte, an Australian singer working at Rules Restaurant in Maiden Lane. Gaisberg made some of the first recordings of the tenor Enrico Caruso, the voice recorded well even on the primitive equipment of the time, and the entire enterprise paid off financially as well as artistically. It also sparked a long and happy transatlantic arrangement, in the US the recordings were issued under the label of the Victor Talking Machine Company, spearheading the March 1903 introduction of Victors new premium Red Seal line. Caruso moved to the U. S. later in 1903, Caruso himself said, My Victor records will be my biography. Gaisbergs brother William worked with him and they signed up and/or recorded such international stars as Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno, Feodor Chaliapin, Beniamino Gigli, Nellie Melba, John McCormack and Fritz Kreisler. Gaisberg was the record producer to record a castrato singer. He cut Indias first gramophone recordings, which featured Gauhar Jaan singing a khayal and these sessions took place in a makeshift studio rigged up in two rooms of a Calcutta hotel. In Japan, he recorded more than 270 titles in one month of 1903
10.
Edison Bell
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Edison Bell was an English company that was the first distributor and an early manufacturer of gramophones and gramophone records. Interest in Edisons phonograph was almost immediate in Britain, in 1879, Edison appointed George Edward Gouraud to represent Edisons European interests in the phonograph and telephone. Edisons overseas plans for his phonograph did not go smoothly, as Gouraud made a significant amount of money exhibiting the phonograph in ways of which met disapproval from Edison, Gouraud was successful at promoting awareness of the phonograph, but was not very good at selling the apparatus. A negotiation for Gourauds resignation brought the results, and as they were in America. The Edison Bell Phonograph Corporation, Ltd. was set up in October 1892 to handle Edisons phonograph manufacturing rights in Great Britain, in November of that year, the Edison Bell Phonograph Company was formed with headquarters at Bartholomew Lane in London. Edison Bell was given the right to manufacture phonographs in Britain, including the right to any improvements made by Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell. In late 1892, the company complained that machines of American manufacture were appearing in their proprietary area, Edison Bell did not sell phonographs and records, but merely leased them. Edison Bell attempted to keep the record out of England, preemptively declaring the device violated their patents. Sales up to this point had been highly sluggish, the American trade paper The Phonoscop blamed Edison Bells exorbitant prices, as the equipment was twice as expensive in England as it was in the United States. Edison Bell was thus assigned patent rights in Australia, China, Japan, South America and this version of the company sold phonographs and records, while a new organization, Edisonia, Ltd. was created to be the manufacturing arm of Edison Bell. Edison Bell was now the corporation with rights to distribute phonographs. As such, they distributed machines and records made by Edison, Columbia, Pathé, the National Phonograph Company was assigned the rights to Thomas Edisons signature, and National, Edison Bell, Pathé and Sterling were the major producers of phonograph cylinders in the early 1900s. Edison Bell introduced Gold Moulded cylinders in 1901, in 1904 Edison Bell began building their own phonographs, rather than importing or re-branding machines from other manufacturers. Rather than attempting to freeze them out entirely from the market, a 1906 trade war between the Edison Bell and the National Phonograph Co. was largely waged in the trade papers The Talking Machine News in London and The Talking Machine World in New York. The war of words in the press led to a blacklisting of Edison Bell by National. The war between Edison Bell and National migrated to the courts in 1907, when National sued to enjoin Edison Bell from using the name Edison, in 1908 Edison Bell introduced the Discaphone, a machine that would play both laterally and vertically-cut disc records. This model was made into the 1920s, and has the distinction of being one of the few gramophones of the era with a British-made motor mechanism, the laterally-cut Edison Bell disc label first appeared May 1908. These had a diameter of 10.5 inches and were until the series was discontinued November 1912 just shy of 500 issues
11.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
12.
Zonophone
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Zonophone was a record label founded in 1899 in Camden, New Jersey, by Frank Seaman. The Zonophone name was not that of the company but was applied to records, the name was acquired by Columbia Records, Victor Talking Machine Company, and finally the Gramophone Company/EMI Records. It has been used for a number of record publishing labels by these companies, Berliner was to hold the patents, Johnson had manufacturing rights, and Seaman had selling rights. Seamans contract contained a clause stating that if he could produce a Gramophone that was cheaper to manufacture, Seaman complained that Johnsons version was too expensive, but Johnson wasnt interested in a redesign since he was already heavily invested producing the existing model. Seaman hired Louis Valiquet to design a less-expensive-to-manufacture version of Johnsons Gramophone, Valiquets design was not only less expensive, but more rugged and more attractive. The Berliner board refused to consider Seamans design, likely due to complicity between Berliner and Johnson, Seaman then began producing Valiquets design as the Zonophone, and he marketed against the other machine he was promoting, the Gramophone. Berliner and Johnson sued Seaman for contract violations and patent infringement, in 1900 Seaman and Mauro succeeded in getting a judge to file an injunction that Berliner and Johnson stop making their products. Johnson first formed the Consolidated Talking Machine Company in order to continue in business as the Berliner name had been enjoined, Johnson formed another company, the Eldridge R. The Victor Talking Machine continued use of the Zonophone name to market cheaper records, in the United Kingdom, Australia, and other British colonies, Zonophone was the cheaper label for Gramophone Company issues. Issue under the label appears to have been an arbitrary choice. In 1911 single-sided Zonophones were withdrawn—existing titles were doubled under the Zonophone Twin label and this made the price difference between the still single-sided Gramophone Company issues and the Zonophones even greater. Ten-inch Zonophone Twins sold as 2s. 6d, in 1913 the Gramophone Company issued an even cheaper label which sold at 1s. 1d. While keeping many of the titles for sale under the Zonophone label at 2s. 6d, some Zonophone recordings were marked with early End User License Agreements, as demonstrated by the sample label. A purchase is an acceptance of these terms, Universal Talking Machine MFG CO, May 1,1911. In the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, the Gramophone Company continued to use the Zonophone label until 1931, when the company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form Electrical and Musical Industries, Ltd. the lower-priced labels of the two firms were merged also as Regal Zonophone. The Joystrings appearance on the label hearkened back to the 1930s and 1940s when Regal Zonophone regularly released Salvation Army brass band recordings. In West Africa Zonophone was used as a label to record and produce Sakara, Juju, chief among these were Procol Harum, and the Move, joined by Tyrannosaurus Rex and Joe Cocker. In the early 1980s, Zonophone was revived by EMI to produce artists such as Angelic Upstarts, the Barracudas, the Cockney Rejects
13.
Eldridge R. Johnson
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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. Thus, in 1883 Johnson was apprenticed to J. Lodge & Son, in 1888, his apprenticeship was completed and Johnson became a machinist at the recently established Scull Machine Shop in Camden, New Jersey. Later that year, John W. Scull died suddenly, Johnson became foreman and manager, while Sculls 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, by 1891 he had returned to Philadelphia. During Johnson’s absence, Scull had been unable to 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 jobs involving steam models. A customer named Henry Whitaker brought a manually driven, hand-cranked Berliner Gramophone, developed by Emile Berliner, into Johnson’s shop, Johnson did so, but Whitaker found the result unsatisfactory. Of his initial introduction to the gramophone Johnson later wrote that “the little instrument was badly designed and it sounded much like a partially educated parrot with a sore throat and a cold in the head. But the little wheezy instrument caught my attention and held it fast, I became interested in it as I had never been interested before in anything. It was exactly what I was looking for. ”In the summer of 1895, while cylinder phonographs had been equipped with clockwork motors for some time, the disc playing gramophone presented a number of design challenges in this regard. Foremost was the drag that the needle and soundbox created when applied to the edge of the disc. This required that the motor provide sufficient torque at start up while retaining a constant speed, representatives of the Berliner company were satisfied with Johnson’s design, and within a year Johnson had begun producing motors for Berliner. Johnson continued to refine the motor during this period, externalizing the motor, Johnson also spent a winter in Philadelphia collaborating on various gramophone refinements with Alfred C. Clark, the most significant of these was a vastly improved soundbox, along with Johnson’s new motor, the Clark-Johnson soundbox became the foundation for Berliner’s Improved Gramophone of 1897. At about this time, Johnson began experimenting with recording and disc duplicating technologies under a cloud of secrecy, Berliner’s process for creating master records involved covering a zinc disc with an acid-resistant fatty coating and then scratching the coating away with a recording stylus
14.
Phonograph cylinder
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Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. In the 1910s, the disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison and his team on July 18,1877 and his first successful recording and reproduction of intelligible sounds, achieved early in the following December, used a thin sheet of tin foil wrapped around a hand-cranked grooved metal cylinder. Tin foil was not a recording medium for either commercial or artistic purposes. Edison moved on to developing a practical incandescent electric light and the improvements to sound recording technology were made by others. After this system was demonstrated to Edisons representatives, Edison quickly resumed work on the phonograph and he settled on a thicker all-wax cylinder, the surface of which could be repeatedly shaved down for reuse. Both the Graphophone and Edisons Perfected Phonograph were commercialized in 1888, eventually, a patent-sharing agreement was signed and the wax-coated cardboard tubes were abandoned in favor of Edisons all-wax cylinders as an interchangeable standard format. Beginning in 1889, prerecorded wax cylinders were marketed and these have professionally made recordings of songs, instrumental music or humorous monologues in their grooves. Each cylinder can easily be placed on and removed from the mandrel of the used to play them. Unlike later, shorter-playing high-speed cylinders, early recordings were usually cut at a speed of about 120 rpm. They were made of a soft wax formulation and would wear out after they were played a few dozen times. The buyer could then use a mechanism which left their surfaces shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them, Cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were usually sold with recording attachments. In the earliest stages of phonograph manufacturing various competing incompatible types of recordings were made. A standard system was decided upon by Edison Records, Columbia Phonograph, the standard cylinders are about 4 inches long, 2¼ inches in diameter, and play about two minutes of music or other sound. Over the years the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and hardened so that cylinders could be played with good quality over 100 times, in 1902 Edison Records launched a line of improved hard wax cylinders marketed as Edison Gold Molded Records. The impressive mention of gold referred only to the extremely thin gold coating deposited onto the wax cylinder to make it electrically conductive. Originally all cylinders sold had to be recorded live on the softer brown wax which wore out in as few as twenty playings, later cylinders were reproduced either mechanically or by linking phonographs together with rubber tubes. Although not completely satisfactory, the result was enough to be sold
15.
Edison Records
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Edison Records was one of the earliest record labels which pioneered sound recording and reproduction and was an important player in the early recording industry. The first phonograph cylinders were manufactured in 1888, followed by Edisons foundation of the Edison Phonograph Company in the same year, until 1910 the recordings did not carry the names of the artists. The company began to lag behind its rivals in the 1920s, Edison invented the phonograph, the first device for recording and playing back sound, in 1877. The earliest phonograph was something of a curiosity, although it was one that fascinated much of the public. Early machines were sold to entrepreneurs who made an out of traveling around the country giving phonograph concerts. Talking dolls and Talking clocks were manufactured as expensive novelties using the early phonograph, in 1887, Edison turned his attention back to improving the phonograph and the phonograph cylinder. The following year, the Edison company debuted the Perfected Phonograph, Edison introduced wax cylinders approximately 4 1⁄4 inches long and 2 1⁄4 inches in external diameter, which became the industry standard. Several experimental wax cylinder recordings of music and speech made in 1888 still exist, the wax entertainment cylinder made its commercial debut in 1889. At first, the customers were entrepreneurs who installed nickel-in-the-slot phonographs in amusement arcades, saloons. At that time, a phonograph cost the equivalent of several months wages for the worker and was driven by an electric motor powered by hazardous. When relatively affordable spring-motor-driven phonographs designed for home use appeared in the mid-1890s, blank records were an important part of the business early on. Most phonographs had or could be fitted with attachments for the users to make their own recordings, one important early use, in line with the original term for a phonograph as a talking machine, was in business for recording dictation. Attachments were added to facilitate starting, stopping, and skipping back the recording for dictation, the business phonograph eventually evolved into a separate device from the home entertainment phonograph. Edison Records brand of business phonograph was called The Ediphone, see Phonograph cylinder, Edison also holds the achievement of being one of the first companies to record the first African-American quartet to record, the Unique Quartet. A notable technological triumph of the Edison Laboratories was devising a method to mass-produce pre-recorded phonograph cylinders in molds and this was done by using very slightly tapered cylinders and molding in a material that contracted as it set. To Edisons disappointment the commercial potential of this process was not realized for some years, most of the regional Edison distributors were able to fill the small early market for recordings by mechanical duplication of a few dozen cylinders at a time. Molded cylinders did not become a significant force in the marketplace until the end of the 1890s, before using metal cylinders though Edison used paraffin paper. In 1902, Edisons National Phonograph Company introduced Edison Gold Moulded Records, cylinder records of improved hard black wax, capable of being played hundreds of times before wearing out
16.
Montreal
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Montreal, officially Montréal, is the most populous municipality in the Canadian province of Quebec and the 2nd-most populous in Canada as a whole. Originally called Ville-Marie, or City of Mary, it is believed to be named after Mount Royal, the city has a distinct four-season continental climate, with warm-to-hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In 2016, Montreal had a population of 1,704,694, Montreals metropolitan area had a population of 4,098,927 and a population of 1,958,257 in the urban agglomeration, with all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal included. Legally a French-speaking city,60. 5% of Montrealers speak French at home,21. 2% speak English and 19. 8% speak neither, Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with 56% of the population able to speak both official languages. Montreal is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the world after Paris, historically the commercial capital of Canada, it was surpassed in population and economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s. It remains an important centre of commerce, aerospace, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, education, culture, tourism, gaming, film, Montreal was also named a UNESCO City of Design. In 2009, Montreal was named North Americas leading host city for international events, according to the 2009 preliminary rankings of the International Congress. According to the 2015 Global Liveability Ranking by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in the 2017 edition of their Best Student Cities ranking, Quacquarelli Symonds ranked Montreal as the worlds best city to study abroad. Also, Montreal has 11 universities with 170,000 students enrolled, the Greater Montréal region has the highest number of university students per capita among all metropolitan areas in North America. It is the only Canadian city to have held the Summer Olympics, currently, the city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One, the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Just for Laughs festival. In 2012, Montreal was ranked as a Beta+ world city, in Kanien’kéha, or Mohawk language, the island is called Tiohtià, ke Tsi or Ka-wé-no-te. In Anishinaabemowin, or Ojibwe language, the land is called Mooniyaang, though the city was first named by French colonizers Ville Marie, or City of Mary, its current name comes from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. The most popular theory is that the name derives from Mont Réal, Cartiers 1535 diary entry, naming the mountain, according to the Commission de toponymie du Québec and the Geographical Names Board of Canada, Canadian place names have only one official form. Thus, Montreal is officially spelled with an accent over the e in both English and French. In practice, this is limited to governmental uses. English-speaking Montrealers, including English-language media, regularly omit the accent when writing in English, archaeological evidence demonstrates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago. By the year AD1000, they had started to cultivate maize, within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages. Archeologists have found evidence of their habitation there and at locations in the valley since at least the 14th century
17.
Edison Disc Record
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The Edison Diamond Disc Record is a type of phonograph record marketed by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on their Edison Record label from 1912 to 1929. They were named Diamond Discs because the matching Edison Disc Phonograph was fitted with a precision-made semi-permanent diamond stylus for playing them, Diamond Discs were incompatible with ordinary disc record players, the disposable steel needles of which would damage them while extracting hardly any sound. Uniquely, they are about 1/4 inch thick, an Edison Disc Phonograph is distinguished by the diaphragm of the reproducer being parallel to the surface of the record. The diaphragm of a used for playing ordinary records is at a right angle to the surface. In 1929 Edison also produced a series of ordinary thin lateral-cut needle type disc records. The record industry began in 1889 with some production of professionally recorded wax cylinder records. Soon, some affluent individuals who could afford expensive toys were customers, by the late 1890s, relatively inexpensive spring-motor-driven phonographs were available and becoming a fixture in middle-class homes. Their quality was soon improved, and by about 1910 the cylinder was clearly losing this early format war. In 1912, Thomas Edison, who had made only cylinders, entered the disc market with his Diamond Disc Phonograph system. Like cylinder records, the sound in a Diamond Discs groove was recorded by the hill-and-dale method, at that time, with the notable exception of Pathé Records, which used yet another incompatible format, a discs groove was normally of constant depth and modulated laterally, side-to-side. The vertical format demanded a perfectly flat surface for best results and they consisted of a thin coating of a hard plastic virtually identical to Bakelite on a core of compressed wood flour, and later also china clay. With very rare exceptions, all were about ten inches in diameter, a feed screw mechanism inside the player moved the reproducer across the record at the required rate, relieving the groove of that work and thus reducing record wear. Above all, there was, and still is, general agreement that the Diamond Disc system produced the clearest, most present sound of any non-electronic disc recording technology, Diamond Discs enjoyed their greatest commercial success from the mid-1910s to the early 1920s, with sales peaking in 1920. Although they arguably had better audio fidelity, they were more expensive than and incompatible with other makers products, not least among the factors contributing to their downfall was Thomas Edisons insistence on imposing his own musical tastes on the catalog. It was not until mid-decade that he ceded control to a younger generation. A special reproducer and modified feed screw mechanism were required to play them, there were problems with skipping, groove wall breakdown, and overall low volume. Only 14 different Edison Long Play discs were issued before they were discontinued, in August 1927, electrical recording began, making Edison the last major record company to adopt it, over two years after Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick had converted from acoustical recording. Edison Records Brunswick Records Victor Records Columbia Records Gramophone record Unusual types of gramophone records
18.
Paris Opera
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The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of France. Classical ballet as we know it today arose within the Paris Opera as the Paris Opera Ballet and has remained an integral, small scale and contemporary works are also staged in the 500-seat Amphitheatre under the Opéra Bastille. The companys annual budget is in the order of 200 million euros, with this money, the company runs the two houses and supports a large permanent staff, which includes the orchestra of 170, a chorus of 110 and the corps de ballet of 150. Each year, the Opéra presents about 380 performances of opera, ballet and other concerts, to an audience of about 800,000 people. In the 2012/13 season, the Opéra presented 18 opera titles,13 ballets,5 symphonic concerts, the companys training bodies are also active, with 7 concerts from the Atelier Lyrique and 4 programmes from the École de Danse. The poet Pierre Perrin began thinking and writing about the possibility of French opera in 1655 and he believed that the prevailing opinion of the time that the French language was fundamentally unmusical was completely incorrect. Seventeenth-century France offered Perrin essentially two types of organization for realizing his vision, an academy or a public theater. On 28 June 1669, Louis XIV signed the Privilège accordé au Sieur Perrin pour létablissement dune Académie dOpéra en musique and he was free to select business partners of his choice and to set the price of tickets. No one was to have the right of free entry including members of the royal court, although it was to be a public theatre, it retained its status as royal academy in which the authority of the king as the primary stakeholder was decisive. The monopoly, originally intended to protect the enterprise from competition during its phase, was renewed for subsequent recipients of the privilege up to the early French Revolution. As Victoria Johnson points out, the Opera was an organization by nature so luxurious and expensive in its productions that its survival depended on financial protection. His first opera Pomone with music by Robert Cambert opened on 3 March 1671, a second work, Les peines et les plaisirs de lamour, with a libretto by Gabriel Gilbert and music by Cambert, was performed in 1672. The institution was renamed the Académie Royale de Musique and came to be known in France simply as the Opéra. Because of legal difficulties Lully could not use the Salle de la Bouteille, during Lullys tenure, the only works performed were his own. The first productions were the pastorale Les fêtes de lAmour et de Bacchus, Lully greatly desired a better theatre and persuaded the king to let him use the one at the Palais-Royal free of charge. The Théâtre du Palais-Royal had been altered in 1660 and 1671, the first production in the new theatre was Alceste on 19 January 1674. The opera was bitterly attacked by those enraged at the restrictions that Lully had caused to be placed on the French, to mitigate the damage, Louis XIV arranged for new works to be premiered at the court, usually at the Chateau Vieux of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. This had the advantage of subsidizing the cost of rehearsals, as well as most of the machinery, sets, and costumes
19.
Angel Records
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Angel Records was a record label founded by EMI in 1953. It specialised in music, but included an occasional operetta or Broadway score. The Angel mark was used by EMI, its predecessors, eMIs classical-music operations were sold to Warner Music Group in 2013. EMI Classics was sold and absorbed into Warner Classics, a recording angel is a traditional figure that watches over people, marking their actions on a tablet for future judgment. Artist Theodore Birnbaum devised a version of this image, depicting a cherub marking grooves into a phonograph disc with a quill. Beginning in 1898, the Gramophone Company in the United Kingdom used this angel as a trademark on its record labels and players, from 1909, Gramophone and related companies began replacing the angel with the famous trademark of a dog listening to a gramophone. The angel was retained in areas where the depiction of a dog was deemed offensive, in 1953 Gramophone successor EMI lost its U. S. distribution arrangement with Columbia Records, which had elected to make Philips Records distributor of U. S. In response, EMI established Angel Records in New York City under the direction of record producers Dorle Soria, the couple concentrated on distributing EMI classical recordings in the U. S. market. S. However, Angel recordings such as Sir Thomas Beechams 1957 performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade, made in England in stereo with the Royal Philharmonic, were imported to the U. S. Several albums featured Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, including Beechams 1959 stereo recordings, some historic EMI recordings have appeared in the U. S. on the Seraphim label on CD in recent years. Since 1990, international use of the Angel mark has been replaced by the EMI Classics label and it is still active in the U. S. In 1992, Angel expanded into the theatre genre by adding the Angel Broadway imprint. In 2001, Angel released newly remastered and expanded editions of the soundtracks of three Rodgers and Hammerstein films – Oklahoma, carousel and The King and I. The LP versions and original CD versions of these soundtracks had previously released by Capitol Records. EMI Classics was sold and absorbed into Warner Classics, the AngelRecords. com URL now redirects to Sinfini Music, an unrelated company. Universal Music owns the Angel trademark, list of record labels Dorle Soria papers, 1930-1991 Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
20.
Nipper
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Nipper was a dog who served as the model for a painting titled His Masters Voice. Nipper was born in 1884 in Bristol, England, and died in September 1895 and he was a mixed-breed dog and probably part Jack Russell Terrier, although some sources suggest that he was a Smooth Fox Terrier, or part Bull Terrier. He was named Nipper because he would bite the backs of visitors legs, Nipper originally lived with his owner, Mark Henry Barraud, in the Princes Theatre where Barraud was a scenery designer. When Barraud died in 1887, his brothers Philip and Francis took care of the dog, Nipper himself died of natural causes in 1895 and was buried in Kingston upon Thames in Clarence Street, in a small park surrounded by magnolia trees. As time progressed the area was built upon, and a branch of Lloyds Bank now occupies the site, on the wall of the bank, just inside the entrance, a brass plaque commemorates the terrier that lies beneath the building. On 10 March 2010, a road near to the dogs resting place in Kingston upon Thames was named Nipper Alley in commemoration of this resident. In 1898, three years after Nippers death, Francis Barraud, his last owner and brother of his first owner, painted a picture of Nipper listening intently to a wind-up Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph. Thinking the Edison-Bell Company located in New Jersey, USA, might find it useful, he presented it to James E. Hough, who promptly said, Dogs dont listen to phonographs. On May 31,1899, Barraud went to the Maiden Lane offices of The Gramophone Company with the intention of borrowing a brass horn to replace the original black horn on the painting. Manager William Barry Owen suggested that if the artist replaced the machine with a Berliner disc gramophone, the company would buy the painting. The image became the trademark of the Victor and HMV record labels, HMV music stores. The trademark was registered by Berliner for use in the United States on July 10,1900. The slogan His Masters Voice, along with the painting, was sold to The Gramophone Company for 100 pounds sterling -50 pounds for the copyright and 50 pounds for the painting itself. We had a phonograph and I often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the came from. It certainly was the happiest thought I ever had, the original oil painting hung in the EMI board room in Hayes, Middlesex, for many years. The iconic image of a mixed fox/bull terrier, Nipper, looking into a phonograph became an symbol of quality. Nipper lives on through the names, he even appeared in ads on television with his son. Real dogs continue to play the roles of Nipper and Chipper, Nipper continues to be the mascot of HMV stores in countries where the entertainment retailer has the rights to him
21.
Phonograph
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The phonograph is a device invented in 1877 for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms it is called a gramophone. To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it. In later electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an electrical signal by a transducer. The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, while other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edisons phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an up and down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil, in the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its system, the stylus or needle. The disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century, from the mid-1980s on, phonograph use on a standard record player declined sharply because of the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc and other digital recording formats. Records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles and DJs, vinyl records are still used by some DJs and musicians in their concert performances. Musicians continue to release their recordings on vinyl records, the original recordings of musicians are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world, in more modern usage, the playback device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings, the roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph, telegraph, and telephone. In British English, gramophone may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, the term phonograph was usually restricted to machines that used cylinder records. Gramophone generally referred to a wind-up machine, after the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm single or two-song records, and EPs, the common name became record player or turntable. Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio and, later, from about 1960, such a system began to be described as a hi-fi or a stereo. In American English, phonograph, properly specific to machines made by Edison, was used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others
22.
Saregama
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Saregama India Ltd. is an Indian music label and content producer for Indian television. Its music catalogue consists of more than 117,000 songs in 14 languages and it has daily and weekly TV shows currently on air with television networks in India. Saregama’s head office is located in Mumbai, with offices in Kolkata, Delhi. It is listed on the NSE and BSE, the company was founded in 1901. It produced the first song recorded in India, and later moved into the production of cinema and television content, digital retailing, aggregation, radio programming, in 1901, operations started as the first overseas branch of Electrical & Musical Industries Limited, EMI London. The company was incorporated on 13 August 1946 with the name of ‘The Gramophone Co, the name of the Company was subsequently changed to ‘The Gramophone Co. of India Limited’ effective 1 April 1956. It was converted into a company on 28 October 1968. RPG Group took over the company in 1985 from EMI, the name of the company was then changed from The Gramophone Company of India Limited to ‘Saregama India Limited’ on November 3,2000. The name Saregama refers to the first four notes of the Indian musical scale, in 2005, the remaining EMI stake was sold off to the parent company. The Gramophone Company is better known as HMV in India, RPG Group has been using the brand under license from the former parent company, EMI. On 3 November 2000, RPG Group changed the name to Saregama India Limited. The Recording Studio and the entire Dum Dum establishment of Saregama India Limited was built in 1928 and it is one of the oldest studios in Southeast Asia. Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore had recorded his songs and poems in his own voice at this studio, rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam’s voice was also recorded here. Artistes who have recorded at this studio include K. C. Dey, Hemanta Mukherjee, Sandhya Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Suchitra Mitra, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, and Ustad Bismillah Khan. Film director Satyajit Ray preferred to record his musical scores for his films at Dum Dum studio, television shows such as Dadagiri, Didi No. 1, Dance Bangla Dance and Saregamapa Lil Champs have been shot at the studio, in March 2015, Saregama relaunched its online music store, consisting of more than 117,000 downloadable songs in 15 languages in lossless WAV format. Saregama has also established relationships with iTunes, OTT services TV channels, Saregama India launched a subscription based mobile application in September 2015 which features its catalogue of Indian classical music. The app, named Saregama Classical has more than 10,000 musical works of over 400 classical music artistes in three major subgenres of Indian Classical music, i. e. Hindustani, Carnatic and Fusion and it also has a curated list of 50 artiste-based stations
23.
Addis v Gramophone Co Ltd
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Addis v Gramophone Co Ltd AC488 is an old English contract law and UK labour law case, which used to restrict damages for non-pecuniary losses for breach of contract. Mr Addis was Gramophone’s manager in Calcutta, in October 1905, he was given six months notice of dismissal as legally required and appointed a successor. However, Gramophone also immediately took steps during this 6-month period to prevent Addis acting as manager, resulting in Addis leaving his job 2 months later, the jury awarded Addis £340 for loss of commissions and £600 for wrongful dismissal. Could there be damages for the manner of dismissal, the Court of Appeal had allowed damages for the manner of the dismissal. Duke KC and Groser, for the appellant, Lord Loreburn held that £600 was not allowed, that he could only recover his six-month salary and no more. Lord Atkinson said the case was in fact about libel, Lord Loreburn LC Lord James of Hereford. The case was met with disapproval in a number of quarters. Sir Frederic Pollock, the editor of the Law Quarterly Review, slowly the case has been repealed as a matter of contract and employment law, illustrated by Farley v Skinner and Johnson v Unisys Ltd
24.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
