The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American record company and phonograph manufacturer headquartered in Camden, New Jersey. The company was founded by engineer Eldridge R. Johnson, who had made gramophones to play Emile Berliner's disc records. After a series of legal wranglings between Berliner 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 on October 3, 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 affiliated their fledgling companies; 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 painting 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 by substituting one of the brass-belled horns on display in the window at the new gramophone shop on Maiden Lane; the Gramophone Company in London, was managed by an American, William Barry Owen. Barraud 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. On close inspection, the original painting still shows the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph beneath the paint of the gramophone. Dozens of copies of "His Master's Voice" were painted by Barraud, several of them commissioned for executives of the Gramophone Company and Victor, though Barraud would paint copies for anybody who paid him for one.

The original painting is in the archives of EMI Records, now owned by Universal Music Group. In 1915, the "His Master's Voice" logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the Victrola cabinet building at Victor's headquarters in Camden, New Jersey; the building still stands today with replica windows installed during RCA's ownership of the plant in its years. Today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D. C. There are different accounts as to. RCA historian Fred Barnum gives various possible origins of the name in "His Master's Voice" In America, he writes, "One story claims that Johnson considered his first improved Gramophone to be both a scientific and business'victory.' A second account is that Johnson emerged as the'Victor' from the lengthy and costly patent litigations involving Berliner and Frank Seaman's Zonophone. A third story is that Johnson's partner, Leon Douglass, derived the word from his wife's name'Victoria.'

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 accepted." 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 same purely mechanical, non-electronic "acoustical" method used since the invention of the phonograph nearly fifty years earlier. No microphone was involved and there was no means of amplification; the recording machine was an exposed-horn acoustical record player functioning in reverse. One or more funnel-like metal horns was used to concentrate the energy of the airborne sound waves onto a recording diaphragm, a thin glass disc about two inches in diameter held in place by rubber gaskets at its perimeter; the sound-vibrated center of the diaphragm was linked to a cutting stylus, guided across the surface of a thick wax disc, engraving a sound-modulated groove into its surface.

The wax was too soft to be played back once without damaging it, although test recordings were sometimes made and sacrificed by playing them back immediately. The wax master disc was sent to a processing plant where it was electroplated to create a negative metal "stamper" used to mold or "press" durable replicas of the recording from heated "biscuits" of a shellac-based compound. Although sound quality was improved by a series of small refinements, the process was inherently insensitive, it could only record sources of sound that were close to the recording horn or loud, then the high-frequency overtones and sibilants necessary for clear, detailed sound reproduction were too feeble to register above the background noise. Resonances in the recording horns and associated components resulted in a characteristic "horn sound" that identifies an acoustical recording to an experienced modern listener and seemed inseparable from "phonograph music" to contemporary listeners. 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 than possible. After improving the quality of disc records and players, Johnson began an ambitious project to have the most prestigious singers and musicians of the day record for Victor, with exclusive agreem

James Maydon "Jimmy" Langley, was an officer in the British Army, who served during World War II. Wounded and captured at the battle of Dunkirk, he returned to Britain and served in MI9. Langley was born in Wolverhampton, the son of Francis Oswald Langley, a stipendiary magistrate and chancellor, he was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Having served as a cadet under officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards on 4 July 1936, promoted to lieutenant on 4 July 1939. Langley was mobilised on 24 August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, in the British Expeditionary Force. In early June 1940, during the battle of Dunkirk, he was wounded in the head and arm. Unable to walk, he was left behind at a Casualty Clearing Station, where he was captured, had his left arm amputated by a German Army doctor. On 10 October he made his way to Marseille. Like other British prisoners in the Vichy Zone Langley was held at Fort Saint-Jean, though this confinement was nominal, as they were only required to attend roll-call once a week, but were otherwise free.

While in Marseille Langley worked as a courier for the escape line run by the Scottish officer Ian Garrow and Minister Donald Caskie. In February 1941 Langley was declared "unfit for further military service" by a Medical Board containing Dr. George Rodocanachi, was repatriated in March. On his return to England he was recruited by Claude Dansey into the Secret Intelligence Service to serve as liaison officer between MI6 and MI9, where most of his work involved the support of escape and evasion lines in north-west Europe, he was promoted to captain on 30 October 1943, to major on 14 April 1944, to acting-lieutenant colonel on 14 January 1944. In January 1944 Langley was appointed to joint command of a new Anglo-American unit. IS9's role was to organise escape and evasion, setting up reception centres, collating intelligence and organising the return of personnel to the UK; these operations extended to liberated POWs. It was involved setting up "safe areas" behind enemy lines in which men could congregate until liberated, rather than risk breaking through the front line.

The organisation was involved in "Operation Pegasus" at Arnhem. Langley was demobilised on 4 July 1946, being transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers with the rank of lieutenant, retaining his seniority, he was promoted to major in the Reserves on 1 January 1949 relinquishing his commission, having reached the age limit, on 12 March 1966, was granted the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel. Post-war he worked for Fisons until 1967 ran a bookshop in Suffolk with his wife, the former Peggy van Lier, a member of the Belgian "Comet line", whom he had married in 1944, they had a daughter. Langley retired in 1976, died in 1983. Langley was portrayed by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2004 BBC series Dunkirk. On 20 December 1940 Langley was awarded the Military Cross "in recognition of gallant conduct in action with the enemy" in France, on 29 April 1941 was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire "in recognition of distinguished services in the field". On 2 August 1945 Langley received a mention in dispatches "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North West Europe".

Fight Another Day. Collins. 1974. ISBN 978-0-00-211241-3. MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945; the Bodley Head. 1979. ISBN 978-0-316-28840-8. With M. R. D. Foot. BibliographyFoot, M. R. D. M.. MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-0-316-28840-8

Hebeloma radicosum known as the rooting poison pie, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Hymenogastraceae. Fruit bodies can be identified by the tapering root-like stipe base, as well as the almond-like odor. Found in Japan and North America, it is an ammonia fungus, fruits on mole, mouse, or shrew middens; the species was first described scientifically by Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard in 1784 as Agaricus radicosus. Adalbert Ricken transferred it to Hebeloma in 1915. Historical synonyms have resulted from the transfer of the fungus to the genera Pholiota by Paul Kummer in 1871, Dryophila by Lucien Quélet in 1886, Myxocybe by Victor Fayod in 1889, Roumeguerites by Marcel Locquin in 1979. Molecular analysis places the species in a basal position of the Myxocybe clade; this grouping of phylogenetically related species contains members that form a pseudorrhiza, such as H. danicum, H. senescens, H. calyptrosporum, H. birrus, H. pumilium, H. cylindrosporum. The mushroom is known as the "rooting poison pie".

The fruit bodies have caps 5–10 cm in diameter that are convex before flattening out in age. The surface of fresh caps is sticky; the margins of young caps are curled inward, have adherent hanging remnants of the partial veil. The gills are notched to nearly free from attachment to the stipe, have scalloped or fringed edges in maturity. White, the gills change from ochre to reddish brown as the spores mature; the stipe measures 7.5–18 cm long by 1.3–2.5 cm thick, is swollen in the middle and tapered on each end. The stipe base is covered with pale brownish fibers and cottony scales over a cream ground color; the stipe is firm, with a ring on the upper portion. The flesh has a mild taste, an odor of almonds or marzipan. Several aromatic compound are responsible for the mushroom's odor, including benzaldehyde, 2-phenylethanal, 2-phenylethanol, phenylacetic acid, N-formylaniline, 1-octen-3-ol. Hebeloma radicosum produces a rusty brown to cinnamon-brown spore print. Spores are almond-shaped, covered in small warts, measure 8–10 by 5–6 μm.

The basidia are four-spored. The mushroom is poisonous, can cause gastrointestinal distress in those who consume it; the Japanese species Hebeloma radicosoides resembles H. radicosum in appearance and habitat, but can be distinguished by its yellower cap and lack of odor. Additionally, H. radicosoides fruits after experimental application of urea to soil, while H. radicosum does not. Another lookalike, Hypholoma radicosum, has a rooting stipe, but it is more slender and smells of the compound iodoform." Hebeloma radicosum is an ammonia fungus, associates with the latrines of moles, wood mice, shrews. The mushroom has been used to study the nesting ecology of moles. Fruit bodies occur on the ground scattered or in groups on soil or grassy areas, are associated with bushes and hedges in residential areas. A Japanese field study demonstrated that male flies of the genus Suillia rest on the mushrooms and defend their territory from others of the same species while waiting to mate with oviparous females.

Hebeloma radicosum fruit bodies can be grown in pure culture conditions in the laboratory. The fruit bodies are negatively not phototropic. Although they do not require light to form primordia, light is needed for differention and maturation; the sensitivity to gravity and light may be related to the growth habits of the fungus, which colonizes deep in the ground where it forms primordia, develops mature fruit bodies on the ground. The species is found in Japan and North America. List of Hebeloma species