RCA Victor. It was an American brand dedicated to the manufacture of electronic products – radio, television, video tape recorders, sound equipment and telephones – and to record production, later divided into Thomson SA and Sony Music Entertainment.
Foundation
According to AbbreviationFinder, RCA was created in 1901 under the name Victor Talking Machine Company by engineers Emile Berliner and Eldridge R. Johnson. In 1929 it was renamed RCA Victor (Radio Corporation of America)
History
The history of this brand began in the winter of 1896, in the engine room of Eldridge R. Johnson’s store in Camden, New Jersey, United States, when he began the production of gramophones for the Berliner gramophone. Not content to simply focus on making gramophones, Johnson has also developed and patented a phono recordings production process.
In August of 1900, Eldridge Johnson formed the Consolidated Talking Machine Company, owning some patents, the brand was able to produce the discs themselves and phonograph machines. Shortly after the consolidation of the company, the name was changed to Eldridge Johnson.
As Emile Berliner’s company went bankrupt, then the company acquired some important patents, which were being forced out of business due to legal problems. The 3 as October as 1901, is made the Victor Talking Machine Company. It represented the merger and reorganization of Berliner with the Johnson factory.
In 1927, under the economic depression of the 1920s, Eldridge R. Johnson sold the corresponding share for $ 23 million to the Siegelman Spyer bankers, creating the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1929. In 1930, Victor was merged with RCA’s Radiola to become RCA Victor Company Inc.
Logo
To identify this brand, a Fox-Terrier dog whose name is Nipper was taken as the logo, it was the work of the English painter Francis Barraud who captured in oil the scene that he observed repeatedly in the house, when he received as an inheritance a phonograph with cylinders Wax and the Nipper puppy that belonged to the deceased brother.
In 1895, when Barraud reproduced on that phonograph one of the cylinders, recorded with the brother’s voice, he observed that Nipper approached the horn and, looking at it, he listened attentively to the voice of the old master. This scene received the name of The Voice of his master (His master’s voice).
Later that work was offered by the author to the Edison Bell Co. in London, but the offer was rejected by that company, inventor of the cylinder phonograph. Faced with this refusal to purchase, Francis Barraud then decided to hang the painting on one of the walls of the workshop.
In 1899, Mr. William Barry Owen appeared before the painter and suggested to Barraud that he replace Edison’s cylinder phonograph of 1877 with the disk gramophone invented by Emilio Berliner in 1888.
Then Barraud painted on the figure of the phonograph that of the gramophone. From the first acoustic recordings on wax matrix to the current laser, compact or digital, they carried and wear Nipper seated in front of a speaker as a symbol of the recording and reproduction of sound.
Artists (edit)
The Victor stamp, with the dog logo, is used until 1945. Countless were the artists who made recordings under this label, among which are cited; Joseph Natus, Metropolitan Orchestra and Sousa’s Band in (1901); Jules Levy, Haydn Quartet, Harry Macdonough, and Mr. David Ferguson in 1902.
Mina Hickman, Dan Quinn, Victor Minstrels, Len Spencer, Cal Stewart, Billy Murray, in 1903; Charles D’Almaine, Arthur Pryor, Corinne Morgan in 1904; James McCool (1905), Victor Dance Orchestra (1906); Ada Jones and Billy Murray (1907).
Maurice Chevalier, Rudy Vallée in 1930; Elisa Coelho, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Davis, in 1931; Louis Armstrong (1932) and Carlos Gardel, Concha Piquer, Enrico Caruso and Xavier Cugat (1935), among others.
