Victor Talking Machine Company
GRAMOPHONE
VICTOR V
1920
Due to its revolutionary recording process of disc records and continuous refinement of its technical parts, the 'Victrola' plays a prominent role in the evolution of the gramophone.
Oak case
spear-tip oak horn
TRIPLE SPRING
ø22” HORN
12” TURNTABLE
Victor Talking Machine Company
New York, U.S.
New York, U.S.
Manufacturer
Whereas previously no mass-production of records existed, Emile Berliner made way for a transition from the phonograph cylinder to the flat record disc. He developed a mass-produceable flat record disc. In collaboration with Eldridge Johnson, the owner of a small machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, Berliner worked on an affordable spring-wound motor for his own disc gramophone and improved the recording process.
After a series of lawsuits and patent infringements, Johnson formed the Victor Talking Machine Company that would become one of America's leading record labels and gramophone manufacturers. They did not only push the boundaries of technological standards, but also associated their product's quality to prestigious opera singers and musicians captured by their in-house recording company.
sources
Largo (Händel)
from Xerxes
Musician: Enrico Caruso
technique
Transforming the previous production process of recording by use of a thick wax-plate, Berliner developed the so-called three-step mother-stamper system. This process, in which an etched metal plate was used, increased the production to up to 100.000 per mastered plate which was an enormous leap in ease and economy of reproduction and protection against wear.
The Victor Talking Machine Co. produced gramophones, so-called 'talking machines' that would play back flat disc records. Through Victor's enormous advertising efforts before Word War I the widespread term "Victrola" would soon be used for any device that would play back records until electrical disc-playing machines emerged that we know today as 'record players'.
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