The Victor Talking Machine Company and Eldridge Johnson: Early Development
Thomas Edison developed the first recording instrument, which he called the
"phonograph" during 1877 and on December 4, 1877, succeeded in recording
and playing back his voice.
Matthew Brady studio famous 1878 photograph of Thomas Edison and his phonograph
This device, and subsequent improvements until 1925 were entirely mechanical, using the
acoustic energy of what was being recorded to engrave an audio image on a surface,
and then using the acoustic energy of a stylus playing the audio image to vibrate
a diaphragm and reproduce the audio signal. Only acoustic energy was used,
and it was transferred mechanically; no electricity was used in such systems
(except, perhaps an electric motor used to rotate certain devices).
For this reason, the early phonograph is said to be an "acoustic"
or "mechanical" recording system.
Following Thomas Edison's development of the cylinder phonograph in 1877, there
were extensive later efforts to develop a recording system which was easier
to use, and in which mass production of recordings was
feasible and economic.
Edison's original phonograph involved recording the sound image on a hollow cylinder,
with a soft surface first on tin foil, later on wax),
on which the recording stylus moved up and down with the audio
signal, perpendicular to the cylinder surface. This up and
down stylus motion is often referred to as the "vertical" or "hill and dale"
Edison cylinders, and the Pathé disks in
France continued to use the hill and dale cutting process, and there
is some argument that distortion is reduced, and dynamic range
increased with this technique.
Edison cylinders had the advantage of being easy to rotate with a
light motor, with easy contact of the stylus with the record
surface. However, cylinders had the disadvantage of being
difficult to reproduce in quantity and at a low cost.
Edison observing a piano recording in 1900
Emil Berliner developed a flat disk
"gramophone", in which the cutting stylus moved laterally, or
parallel to the disk surface. This is referred to as the
"lateral" recording process. Berliner's first patent of
recording technology was granted in 1887, with a patent for his flat
disk system granted in 1888. Berliner referred to his system
as the "Gramophone". Berliner's used a wax covered
zinc disk, with a stylus cutting away the wax to form a recorded
groove. Acid would then cut the recording grove in the zinc,
with the wax protecting the zinc surface where no grove had been cut.
Berliner then placed the the zinc master with into an alkaline bath, which
deposited copper onto the zinc master.  The zinc would be then be removed
by sulphuric acid, leaving a copper negative image of the zinc master.
Sulphuric acid does not attack copper. This copper negative could then
be used to stamp many record disks.
However, this process destroyed the zinc original master, so clearly only one
copper stamper could be produced. Therefore, the number of copies of the
gramophone record were clearly limited. This was a drawback of the
Berliner process, which Eldridge Johnson and Victor later solved.
The resulting Berliner gramophone recording was louder and the disk more sturdy
than Edison wax cylinders, but they were also noisy, and the sound somewhat
distorted by the acid etching process.
Emile Berliner circa 1900
Initially, the Gramophone was more a toy
than an instrument, because of its cheap and crude, hand cranked
construction. Berliner's initial models were manufactured in
Germany, including a mechanism for a talking doll.
In 1895, following the granting to Berliner of the key lateral stylus
recording patent (534,543) the Berliner Gramophone Company was formed in Philadelphia.
Unfortunately for Berliner, his company had weak management, and he
fell in with partners who would eventually destroy his business
through dissention and litigation.
As surprising amount of gramophone
development occurred in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.
This seems influenced by the decisions of Emile Berliner.
Berliner had the practice of demonstrating his technical
advancements periodically at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia,
a scientific institute. In 1897, Berliner sent Fred W.
Gaisberg to set up a recording studio in Philadelphia, with Alfred
Clark sent to open a retail shop in Philadelphia1.
Fred Gaisberg later became a legend in the
early recordings of nearly all the famous, including Caruso.
Alfred Clark, who had also worked for Edison, had a remarkable
career eventually becoming Chairman of the Gramophone Company in
London, and later, Chairman of EMI, following the merger of the
Gramophone Company with the (British) Columbia Graphophone company
Eldridge Johnson was located across the
Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey. Johnson was a machinist,
inventor and model maker. The Gramophone Company and its New York
distributor asked Johnson to develop a reliable and inexpensive
drive mechanism for the Gramophone. Johnson worked during the
period 1895 to 1896 on developing and improving such a
mechanism. Previous Gramophones used either a highly variable
hand crank, or an expensive and noisy electric motor. Johnson
sought to develop a reliable and inexpensive spring motor.
Designing a spring motor to reliably and
consistently play the disk was difficult, because drag caused by the
playing stylus and sound box at the outside, or beginning of the
disk was much higher than nearer the disk center. This was a
problem even though the disks of that period were only about 7
inches in diameter, the 10 inch disks only coming after 1900, and 12
inch disks after 1902. Eldridge Johnson's first 10 inch disk
was cut on January 3, 1901 2.
In March, 1898, Johnson was granted US
Patent 601,198 "Gramophone and Actuating Device There for" employing
a spring motor kept at a constant speed by a fly ball speed
governor. His machine's speed was adjustable, and speed was
remarkably uniform from beginning to the end of the disk.
Johnson began to sell his own machines
through his Consolidated Talking Machine Co. The patent
granted Johnson and his victories in a series of patent fights were
contrasted by Emile Berliner's losses in the courts to his rivals;
his former partners. In 1900, after a rival successfully enjoined the sale of the
Berliner Gramophone, Eldridge Johnson was able to purchase the US assets of the
Berliner Gramophone Company. He also survived other legal
challenges to his patents over the next years, and eventually
negotiated a settlement among the parties, including a patents cross
license between Victor, Columbia, and Edison on December 8, 19033.
Eldridge Johnson develops electroplating of the wax master
Johnson also developed in the later
1890s a new and superior method of creating the disk master that was
used to press the many copies of a gramophone disk. He began
using a wax disk, and designed a cutting tool similar to the cutting
device on a lathe. This cutting tool was attached at a ninety
degree angle to the diaphragm of a sound box, thus making a lateral
cutting motion. He used a screw drive to propel the cutter
across the surface of the wax, making the recording in the soft
surface. Johnson's problem was how to electroplate the wax
disk, wax being non-conductive. This was accomplished by
brushing metal dust across the wax surface, and then electroplating
this surface3. Initially, this dust apparently was
lead, and then copper4, and in later years, graphite was used on the
surface for conductivity. To read more about the process which
developed from Eldridge Johnson's innovation in the use of
electrolysis to create generations of copies from the master disk,
click on the
Creation of Metal Stampers from a Wax Master.
In 1900, Johnson also developed and
patented a new method of applying a circular paper label to the
center of the disk while the pressed disk was still hot19.
This was not the first time paper labels had been fixed to a record,
but it was a superior method used for many years.
Meanwhile, Johnson was developing superior performing playing machines, a key to his
future success. The first Victor labeled records were issued in early 1901, still
labeled with Johnson's name and not "Victor Talking Machine Company"
(which was not yet created) 5.
On October 3,1901, Johnson merged his Consolidated
Talking Machine Co. with the Berliner Gramophone Company to create
the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey. In
that year, he introduced five new phonograph models, and during
1901, sold 7.570 machines to the public.
Unlike Berliner, Bell and Tainter, Eldridge Johnson had succeeded in
creating a system or machine and disk that was relatively easy to
use, practical and economic in manufacture, and with a satisfactory
sound quality. This, along with his ability in organization,
business, and avoiding further litigation was the key to his and
Victor's success. From this point on Victor
grew prodigiously, and in the United States, the trade names of
"Berliner" and "Gramophone" were superseded
by "Victor" and "Victrola".
Following the creation of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and the introduction of
new recordings and new machines, the company prospered.
The famous "His Master's Voice" logo was introduced in 1902 on Victor
labels6. Sales further expanded, and in 1902, Victor sold 1,696,000
Victor continued to introduce innovative new machines, such as the Victrola Model XVI in 1906.
Unlike previous playing machines, with
external horns, the Victrola Model XVI had its reproducing horn
incorporated into the cabinet work of the machine, transforming it
into a piece of household furniture.
Victor was also assiduously developing its catalog of recordings. Johnson, who
was strategically far-sighted made Victor's objective to contract, on an exclusive
basis if possible, the leading musicians and singers of the era.
Fred Gaisberg early contributed to this
by his famous 1902 Milan recordings of Caruso for the princely sum of £500
for the Gramophone Company. Through their agreements with the
UK company, Victor also had access to the Caruso recordings.
Beginning in 1904, after Caruso relocated to New York City, to the
Metropolitan Opera, Caruso became an exclusive recording artist for
Victor, a relationship lasting until the tenor's withdrawal from
performing in 1920. This became lucrative not only for Victor,
but a source of wealth for Caruso. For example, in 1910 alone,
Caruso received more than $70,000 in royalties 8 from Victor, worth
more than $1.5 million in current purchasing value.
As well as Caruso, Giuseppe De Luca, Geraldine Farrar, Amelita Galli-Curci,
Giovanni Martinelli, Alma Gluck, John McCormack, Maud Powell,
Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Antonio Scotti, Luisa Tetrazzini,
Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Victor Herbert, and Serge Rachmaninoff
all recorded for Victor, sometimes in combinations, during the acoustic era.
Victor recordings of stars were issued on a special red label, becoming the
famous Victor Red Seal recordings. Initially, the Victor Red Label
was a bright red indicating "Victor Record", with the His Master's
Voice logo. The so-called "Grand Prize" labels featured that
wording around the center hole, as shown below. These were produced from
1905 to 1909 9.
Between 1908 and 1913, the "Patent Label" was used, with various lists of patent
numbers. This was followed by the famous "Bat Wing" labels, of a darker maroon color with
a gold circular decoration which suggested bat wings to some, and with the name of "Victor"
on some and eventually "Victrola" on all 9.
John R. Bolig in his masterful source book "The Victor Red Seal
Discography Volume 1: Single-Sided Series (1903-1925)" 9 states that the first
25 Victor Red Seal disks were all from their British associated company, the
Gramophone & Typewriter Company. The Victor Talking Machine Company
had signed agreements with G&T to import the matrices for nine of Caruso's recordings,
as well as some of the other successful recordings of the G&T catalog. So, the first
twenty-five Red Seal records sold in the United States. from G&T origin, were offered to the
public on March 28, 1903." 10
Importance of Eldridge Johnson to the development of the phonographic
Eldridge Johnson developed and patented
many key technological aspects of his eventually successful
phonograph recording and playing system. However, it is not
primarily in the invention of these innovations which were his major
contribution, as was the case of Edison or Berliner. Neither
Edison nor Berliner were gifted developers of a business based on
phonographic technology. Eldridge Johnson was a gifted builder
of business, who was able to bring together disparate technologies,
manufacturing innovations, people, organization, and financing that
lead to the amazing success of the Victor Talking Machine Company.
This resulted in the phonograph, and very often a Victrola, becoming
a feature of every middle and upper class household in the US and
western Europe, and the creation of a major new industry.
The several areas of his contribution were
each an ingredient of the eventual success of Victor:
The patent litigation of 1898 to the end
of 1903 regarding phonograph patents was one of the most expensive,
turbulent, and also confusing legal battles regarding technology.
Its cost in millions of dollars in legal fees, plus the millions of
lost profits of the participants surely matches in today's money any
such technology battles of the last fifty years. Johnson's
acuity was to effectively patent his own technology, and to purchase
or license other patents he judged he would need. This was
particularly difficult, since a number of key patents had never been
tested in court, so the weight of their claims were uncertain.
Eldridge Johnson Patent 601.198 of 1898
Finally, he was instrumental in the industry reaching the cross-licensing
agreements of December, 1903 which ended most of the ongoing patent
litigation among the key companies. Thereafter, they would
"fight it out in the marketplace", where Victor proved to
be successful, due to its other strengths. These 1903 patent settlements
were primarily due to the vision and intervention of Johnson.
The previous efforts of technology
developers to perfect a phonograph system that would gain wide
public acceptance and creation of a new market were unsuccessful.
This was primarily due to the lack of quality of their systems.
Neither the Bell -Tainter, the Berliner, nor even the Edison system
had been commercially successful. They were simply too low in
volume, high in noise, variable in pitch, and generally primitive in
sound to satisfy the public. By many smaller and larger
improvements, Johnson and his co-workers were able to improve each
of these characteristics: increased volume, reduced noise, steady
pitch, and general quality of reproduction. This essentially
transformed a toy or novelty device into an entertainment medium.
No developer prior to Eldridge Johnson had succeeded in achieving
3. Manufacturing Process and Cost:
Practical and economic mass production
of recordings prior to Eldridge Johnson's innovations was not
feasible. For example, a practical method to manufacture
copies of cylinder recordings was not developed until 1902. Mass
duplication of cylinders, whether by Edison or by Bell - Tainter was
done by recording cylinders on as many as fifteen recording horns,
simultaneously for a band11, or perhaps four or five horns
simultaneously for a singer. Repeating these multiple
recording again and again must have been exhausting, and even so,
would not produce a large number of cylinders to sell.
Edison Band recording session using thirteen phonograph machines to simultaneously
record cylinders 12
Berliner's acid etching of a zinc master
disk made reproduction of multiple copies of a single recording much
more practical, but for technical reasons not described here, mass
production of good quality copies was also restricted, and the
pressing of disks initially on celluloid and then on hard rubber was
not particularly reliable. Berliner adopted a shellac
disk in 1896 13.
Also the recording, cleaning, acid etching, removal of wax, and the problem of
acid etching surfaces other than the recording groves, resulted in a difficult process,
and a relatively high surface noise of the resulting recording.
Based on manufacturing cost and manufacturing reliability, none of these systems prior
to Johnson's innovations were the basis for a major new industry.
Johnson's wax disk master, electroplating method, the making multiple mother
pressing disks, and the mass production of
reliable shellac disk pressings changed all this. Victor
recording had good volume and relatively
quiet surfaces and provided the public with the product they could
welcome. All this was done at a controlled and economic manufacturing cost,
with a robust process.
Eldridge Johnson was in the category of
a number of manufacturing pioneers, such as Henry Ford, Harvey
Firestone, and other innovators in his ability to build an effective
business organization. This was an ability missing from Bell
and Tainter, from Berliner, and even from Edison. Eldridge Johnson also had a
strong strategic vision, which caused him to invest in continued
technology development, and in people, leading to a strong
management team. He was an early advocate of spreading company
stock ownership not only to managers, but widely within Victor
Talking Machine Company. Many became millionaires. He also practiced what is now
referred to as "management by walking about" wherein he would
circulate around the company shops and buildings, speaking with
employees and finding out what was going on.
Eldridge Johnson in 1903
Johnson and one of his earliest hires,
an business friends was Leon F. Douglass, who was first Vice
President and General Manager of the Victor Talking Machine Company,
and later Chairman of the Board from 1906 to 1918 build the company in the early years.
Douglass, who was also a phonograph pioneer entrepreneur is quoted from his
unpublished autobiographical notes "...Johnson left everything
pertaining to sales, advertising, and recording to me."14
Douglass promoted Victor products to the extent that the Victor
Talking Machine Company was one of the largest mass media advertisers in the
first decade after incorporation. Douglass later withdrew for health
reasons, but continued to aid Victor.
5. Alliance with Great Britain's Gramophone Company:
From the beginning, Johnson and the Victor Talking Machine Company had a key
alliance with the Gramophone Company Limited (renamed "Gramophone & Typewriter
Company" between December, 1900 and November, 1907), which had also
had connections with Berliner and with Johnson.
The two companies divided the world
markets primarily according to their copyright (including the Nipper
logo and "His Master's Voice") and patent rights: the
Gramophone Company would sell to the British Empire and Europe,
while Victor would sell to the United States, Latin America, the
Middle East and Africa, and Asia/Pacific 15.
This alliance benefited both firms, and brought to Victor in the early years
many European artists, including Caruso, the first artist to sell one million records.
6. Building a brand image through exclusive recording contracts with
the great artists of the world:
Eldridge Johnson worked relentlessly to erase the previous public image
of the phonograph as a toy of inferior quality. His investment in
advertising was unprecedented, reaching more than $1.5 million annually by
1912. Johnson himself said "advertising increases the turnover at
less cost than by any other method"16. Benjamin Aldridge
wrote " ... The company's advertising policy-at least after 1903-was
a heavy-handed one. The mediums used, in the main, were magazines
and newspapers. There was no effort to get maximum results at
minimum cost, but rather to use every publication for which there
was any justification. There were times when the money came hard,
but it came. The advertisements were everywhere you looked ... !"
Previously listed are some of the many names that Victor Talking Machine Company
signed to exclusive recording contracts. Eldridge Johnson saw this as a
means to establish and emphasize the leadership and quality of
Victor in providing the best recordings of the best artists.
The Gramophone Company and Columbia did not generally enter into
exclusive recording contracts with the great artists. Columbia
in 1903 recorded a series of great artists, including Edouard de
Reszke, Ernestine Schumann-Heink and Marcella Sembrich, but did not continue in later years.
Also, unlike Victor, Columbia did not differentiate its artists
quality by distinctive colored labels or by catalog number18
until Louis Sterling took Columbia over in 1925. Edison,
who had no particular interest in music recorded mainly novelty acts and
The first full two page advertising spread that Victor was able to afford, in 1904
in the then famous Saturday Evening Post set the standard by featuring a roster of its artists.
This, along with the theme of the Victrola as a prestige feature of
every home, became Victor's usual advertising theme.
The combination of these abilities
and innovations contributed by Eldridge Johnson was the key to the success of
the Victor Talking Machine Company and the creation and growth of
this major new industry. The development of this new recording
medium and the growth and creativity it released has parallels in
the growth of the digital computer industry in the 1950s and 1960s,
and in internet-based business more recently.
14 Douglass, Leon F.
(Gracyk, Tim. editor). Leon F. Douglass: Inventor and Victor's First Vice-President
an unpublished autobiography at Tim Gracyk's excellent old phonograph website
15 page 45 Aldridge, Benjamin. L. The Victor Talking Machine Company
(edited by Frederic Bayh) RCA Sales Corporation. 1964
16 Gelatt, Roland The Fabulous Phonograph
Cassell & Company, 1954 rev. 1977 ISBN 0-304-29904-9
17 page 49 Aldridge, Benjamin L. op. cit.
18 Moses, Julian Morton. Collectors'
Guide to American Recordings 1895 - 1925.
American Record Collectors' Exchange. New York. 1949.
19 Koenigsberg, Allen. The Patent History of the
Phonograph 1877-1912. APM Press. Brooklyn, NY 1990
Note: Also consult the Berliner Registry Project http://www.berliner.netfirms.com/
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