North American Phonograph Company
The North American Phonograph Company was an early attempt to commercialize the maturing technologies of sound recording in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Though the company was largely unsuccessful in its goals due to legal, technical and financial problems, it set the stage for the modern recording industry in the mid 1890s.
North American Phonograph Company
Jesse H. Lippincott, founder of the North American Phonograph Company.
The title page of North American Phonograph Company's first catalog, 1890
Stock certificate of the North American Phonograph Company, issued March 14, 1893 in Jersey City, N.J., originally signed by Thomas Alva Edison as president. The illustration on the left shows an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph; on the right is an 1888 American Graphophone Company Model B treadle phonograph for wax cylinders.
The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States.
A Columbia "Precision" Graphophone, a cylinder model sold in France, 1901
American Graphophone's 1888 wax cylinder graphophone. The machines were marketed for only a few years by American Graphophone and the North American Phonograph Company, but were superseded by Edison's 1888 'perfected phonograph' and its solid wax cylinders.
A 1912 advertisement for the Columbia Grafonola
