# The Total Awesomeness of Victor Redseal



## Guest (Jul 1, 2017)

We really owe our knowledge of classical music to Victor Redseal or, rather, I should say to Victor Red Seal. Without this label, most of us might never have heard classical music and certainly would not have heard the variety and the various composers and musicians of this mega-genre.

So let's go back to the beginning:

While the first recording medium was the was wax cylinder, Emile Berliner (1851-1929) invented the recording disc in 1887. He was born in Hanover, Germany of a Jewish background but stated that he was agnostic. Even as a boy he liked to invent. So after coming to the US in 1870 and settling in New York and studying physics and becoming a US citizen in 1881, Berliner found himself trying to find a better method of recording sound than with a wax cylinder. He had already invented an early carbon microphone for use in telephones, got a patent and Bell began to use it. Unfortunately for him, Edison challenged Berliner's patent and won. In 1887, Berliner got the idea of inventing his own recorded product he wanted to call a "gramophone." He was experimenting with cylinders coated with lamp black and fixed with varnish but found that they were hard to copy. Ease of making a great many copies fast and cheap was of paramount importance to an entrepreneur as Berliner. He hit on the idea of a discoidal plane.

In 1888, Berliner coated a zinc disc with a thin layer of wax and recorded with it. Afterwards, he bathed the disc in acid to etch the line into the zinc's surface. This disc was actually playable but instead Berliner planned to use it as a master from which to make identical copies of a cheaper and more viable medium. He took out patents but they spent a while in the court dockets pending so he went to Germany in 1890 and demonstrated his disc and player for a group of backers--a very primitive model. The backers liked the product and marketed the device as a toy. The discs were 7 inches in diameter and made of vulcanized rubber and were copied from the metal master. While Berliner dreamed of greater things, this toy proved his idea was sound--no pun intended. The big problem was the wind-up mechanism. As it lost tension, it slowed down and this needed to be rectified.









Very early celluloid disc of Berliner's.









Disc of vulcanized rubber. These played at 70 r.p.m. and recorded on one side only.

In 1894, Berliner was back in America and persuaded some backers to front him $25,000--a huge some in those days--and, with it, Berliner founded the United States Gramophone Company and hired Frank Seaman as its president. Berliner also hired a manufacturer named Eldridge Johnson with a shop in Camden, New Jersey to come up with a wind-up mechanism that did not slow as it lost tension. Johnson didn't have the required mechanical prowess to invent such a device but he was savvy enough to hire someone who could. Johnson's engineer,Levi Montross, designed a little spring-driven motor and Johnson had his shop make one. It worked so well that Berliner told Johnson to buy and patent the design and he made Johnson his main gramophone manufacturer.

About 1895, Berliner hit on a recording disc compound that was to remain a mainstay in the recording industry for decades to come: he used a shellac compound. It produced a heavy, brittle disc but the recording quality was far superior to other discs (by this time Columbia was making discs and were fierce competitors).









Imperial was a subsidiary of Berliner Gram-O-Phone.

Within a short while, Frank Seaman's second-in-command, William Barry Owen, left the States and went to England where he founded the Gramophone Company. Eldridge Johnson owned the patent for the spring-loaded wind-up motor and he left Berliner and formed the Consolidated Talking Machine Company in Philadelphia. Frank Seaman founded National Gramophone. These three men competed fiercely with one another with Columbia and Zon-O-Phone also joining the fracas.

Soon all the parties ended up in court. Berliner argued that the spring motor patent should go to him because he was the driving force behind its invention and it was he who told Johnson to patent it. He apparently never thought to check exactly whose name was on the patent that Johnson took out. Seaman insisted the motor was being used by National before anyone else was using it and so the patent was his. Columbia and Zon-O-Phone said many of Berliner's patents were illegally gained from them. The Gramophone War, as it was called, was fought in the courts from 1896 to 1901.

The public clearly preferred the Consolidated wind-up gramophone and so Johnson called his label "Improved Gram-O-Phone." Johnson also relocated his company to Camden, New Jersey where his machine shop was and started putting his own name on the discs instead of Consolidated.









Consolidated Disc on the left made in Philadelphia. A Camden disc on the right bearing Johnson's name. The court ruled that Johnson could not use "gramophone" or "gram-o-phone" in his label's name since that was patented to Berliner so Johnson changed the label to simply say "Improved."

In 1900, the court ruled in Johnson's favor. The wind-up mechanism was his not Berliner's simply because the patent was issued in Johnson's name. This gave Johnson great power over his competitors since the public preferred his product. Berliner had also been temporarily forbidden by court order to make records in America until the patent dispute was settled. Berliner realized he had to do something to stay afloat. Johnson and Berliner owned patents that the other needed so they combined forces. Berliner sold his patents to Johnson and Consolidated absorbed Berliner Gramophone and incorporated as the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901 when the order against Berliner was lifted. In March, Johnson started Victor Records.









The basic Victor disc was 7 inches in diameter. Ten-inch records were labeled as such. The following year, Monarch was developed specifically for 10-inch records. These are known as the "pre-dog" labels.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2017)

The Monarch pre-dog label made specifically for the 10-inch records.









Meanwhile, in England, William Barry Owen was getting the Gramophone Company off the ground and had a factory on Maiden Lane. One day, a struggling "people's artist" named Francis James Barraud came to his office requesting a golden horn attachment as a loan. He needed it, he explained as he took out his painting to show Owen, because he had painted his dog, Nipper, staring into the bell or horn of an Edison cylinder-player (or phonograph as it was called). He couldn't find a buyer and even Edison turned him down. He thought that part of the problem was that the painting was too dark and thought a bright golden horn would really spice things up.

Owen studied the painting and told Barraud he would give him an entire gramophone if he would consider changing the device in the painting from a phonograph to a gramophone and, if Barraud was willing to make this change, Owen would buy the painting if Barraud was willing to sell it. Owen wanted a distinctive trademark or logo for his company but didn't come across anything he liked--until now. He wanted this painting. Barraud said he would be happy to make the change and was more than willing to sell it. Unlike his famous father and uncle, William and Henry Barraud, Francis wasn't a painter of masterpieces. He sold his art to common folk using quaint subject matter rather than bayhound horses chasing foxes or tigers eating gazelles. Before Barraud left the Gramophone Company offices with a new gramophone in tow, Owen asked him what the title of the painting was. Barraud replied, "His Master's Voice."









Barraud redid the painting as Owen had asked and dropped it off at Maiden Lane and eagerly awaited a response. He got one two weeks later when a letter arrived at his studio from the Gramophone Company offices. Owen offered Barraud 50 pounds for the painting and another 50 pounds for the exclusive right to use it in any way they saw fit. Barraud couldn't have cared less how they used it, he needed the money. He, no doubt, did a bit of celebrating with his 100 pounds but could he have ever dared to guess how famous that painting would become?

To set the story straight, the dog's name was Nipper and he really did exist. He was a terrier mixture of some sort. He was not actually Barraud's dog. Nipper actually belonged to his brother, Mark, another artist who painted signs and stage sets and lived on the edge of poverty with his wife in the town of Bristol. Mark encountered Nipper around 1883 or so while taking a walk. Nipper was still a puppy at the time and appeared to be a stray. Barraud spoke to him and petted him and Nipper followed him home and refused to leave. Barraud and wife became very fond of him. He was plucky and smart with a tendency to nip at the backs of visitor's legs and that was how he got his name.

Mark was a hard drinker and his drinking caught up to him and laid him in his grave while still fairly young in 1887. Ms. Barraud had to find new digs. She wrote to Francis, who had visited Mark frequently and had a very good rapport with Nipper, and asked if he would look after the dog so she could look for a place. Francis, who lived in Liverpool, Lancashire said of course he would and Nipper came to live with Francis for a several years. Francis's wife was also very fond of Nipper.

He was an energetic dog and Francis took him for walks in the park so he could burn off energy. Once Nipper killed a pheasant there but Francis was afraid to take it home fearing it might be deemed illegal so he left it there. Otherwise, Nipper spent the day with Francis in his studio where he became a favorite of Barraud's various clients. Barraud bought a phonograph to keep his clients at ease as they posed. He got the idea from his contemporary, Sir Hubert von Herkomer, whom he admired. Barraud kept the phonograph on a table.

One day, Barraud watched Nipper sitting on the table close to the bell as he stared into it with his ears pricked up. As the music and voices issued from the bell, Nipper would tick his head from side to side clearly puzzled as to the source of the sounds. It seemed to Barraud that Nipper might have thought the voices were his dead master, Mark Barraud, speaking to him from beyond the grave and the image stayed with him. About 1895, Mark Barraud's widow, sent for Nipper. she had found a place in Kingston-Upon-Thames in Surrey and wanted her beloved dog back so Francis delivered him. In September of that year, Nipper died at age 11 or 12 and was buried in Kingston-Upon-Thames.

Three years after Nipper's death, Francis was trying to come up with a theme for a painting that he could sell in short order. Children and/or pets were always good sellers with the general public and Francis thought about Nipper staring into the bell of his phonograph and so painted a scene of Nipper seated before the bell frozen in the act of ticking his head side to side.

Barraud titled the work "Dog Looking at and Listening to a Phonograph" and registered the painting under that title in February of 1898. Going with his original impression of the dog hearing his dead master's voice, Barraud retitled the painting "His Master's Voice." If this was in hopes that the Royal Academy would exhibit the work, Barraud was sadly mistaken. They turned him away. Barraud had hoped to get the painting published in a few magazines but they said the painting did not make sense. Barraud went to the Edison Bell Company who made the phonograph seen in the painting. They were not interested in purchasing it because, they told him, dogs don't listen to phonographs (weird reasoning when Nipper did indeed listen to it and they could have easily told customers as a sales gimmick that if the machine can fool a dog's sharp ears imagine how real it must sound).

In 1900, Berliner, Owen's boss, came to Britain and requested that American and Canadian rights to the painting be granted to him as the inventor of the recording disc and gramophone. Owen sold Berliner the rights. Berliner's records were recorded only on the label side and the flip side featured "His Master's Voice":









"His Master's Voice" had been used on some needle tins and catalogs in 1900 but these were the first discs to bear the image.

In 1901, Berliner requested that the rights to the painting go to the Victor Talking Machine Company and Owen obliged.

With Victor owning copyrights on "His Master's Voice," Victor of Japan requested Japanese rights to the painting be granted to Victor's Japanese subsidiary in 1904. Owen sold Victor of Japan those rights. Latin America would also request its rights to the picture. The Gramophone Company letterhead began featuring "His Master's Voice" in 1907.

By 1902, Victor began using "His Master's Voice" as a label:









Monarch was for 10-inch records and De Luxe was for 12-inchers. About 1902, a Gramophone Company agent in St. Petersburg, Russia put out the first Gramophone Record Red Seals. In England, they followed suit calling them simply "Red Labels." Monarch was the first red seal released in the U.S. By 1903, the 7-inch disc was dropped and all Victor records were 12- or 10-inch. Mostly 12-inchers, though.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2017)

By March of 1903, Victor issued the Deluxe Special disc which was 14 inches and played at 60 rpm. These were designed to hold longer pieces without sacrificing sound quality. By March of 1905, the Monarch and Deluxe labels were discontinued and both 10- and 12-inch discs were put out simply as Victor. "Grand Prize" commemorates the first place awards the Victor disc won at the Buffalo and St. Louis Expositions.









The Victor discs after 1905 went to the "batwing" design. The Victrola label became the new Red Seal.









One of the original red seals out of the St. Petersburg, Russia where they first came from. Notice Nipper isn't used but rather a cherub. It was first painted in 1898 by Theodore Birnbaum and was used as the trademark or logo of Gramophone records, first in the U.K. and then other countries although William Barry Owen never liked it much. Apparently, Berliner didn't care for it much either. The image was a modification of the idea of many cultures that one had an angel that wrote down all of one's thoughts and deeds on a tablet. Many Christians believed this tablet would be what God would read on Judgment Day. In Islam, Muslims believe in the Kiraman Katibin who are two angels called Raqib and Atib who record all of a person's thoughts, deeds and feelings. One sat on the right and recorded all good deeds and one sat on the left and recorded all bad deeds. This translated into Christian culture, especially in cartoons, as the angel who sits on a person's right shoulder and tries to keep the person from doing wrong or committing sin while a devil sits on the left shoulder and tempts the person: "C'mon! Heh-heh-heh! You know you really want to!" Comedian Flip Wilson used a variation of this with his famous quip (usually while dressed in drag as "Geraldine"): "The devil made me do it, honey! WOO!"

In Hebrew Kabbalism, the highest of the all the angels is Metatron although he is not mentioned in the Tanakh. He is called the "Recording Angel" and the "Celestial Scribe." Before becoming an angel, he was a human named Enoch. The Jewish-Christian books of Enoch are about him and the magical system developed by John Dee and Edward Kelly in Elizabethan England is known as the Enochian system in which they would contact Enoch via scrying and he would point to characters on a kind of chart which Kelly would relay to Dee who wrote them down and by which they developed an Enochian alphabet and language. Birnbaum may have depicted his angel as a cherub because the Zohar calls Metatron "the Youth."

Birnbaum also replaced the tablet upon which these various scribe angels wrote with a recording disc. This ties in with the concept of the Akashic records which certain types of New Agers believe are written and stored on the etheric plane and which contain all human thoughts and deeds for all time. Upon the adoption of Nipper as the official trademark of Victor, the recording angel wasn't retired. It came in quite handy because Nipper became an international trademark nightmare. This was because Victor might use Nipper in one country but not in another. Also, some cultures found the dog offensive. In Islam, for example, dogs are believed to be an unclean animal--whatever they mean by that term--and so would be offended to see an unclean animal on their record labels (and, as we should all know, Muslims won't hesitate to make a huge deal of this kind of thing). In these cases, the cherub became the go-to trademark.









The Russian Monarch label used the cherub.









By 1909, the Commonwealth nations began using "His Master's Voice" as a label and called it HMV for short. Note the angel at the bottom.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2017)

The Gramophone Company of Russian moved in 1903 to Riga. They stayed there for 11 years. Starting in 1911, they issued their first double-sided records. In 1914, military operations forced them to move to Moscow at the Writing Amour plant on Stshipok Street and Amour Gramophone was founded. They were shut down in 1918.









The idea of the red seal or label from the very beginning was reserved for the greatest caliber concert and operatic performers. In 1903, Victor signed Enrico Caruso to an exclusive contract. This made the Red Seal division of Victor highly sought after by classical artists. So distinctive were the red labels that Victor went after any other company that attempted to use a red label. The legal intimidation worked until 1943 when a court finally ruled against them. The red seals were recorded on one side only until 1923.





A Victor Red Seal recording of Caruso from 1904. Even in these days of non-electric recordings, his voice comes through with stunning clarity. In fact, the recording itself is utterly splendid. The Monarch and De Luxe discs were European recordings pressed in America. With Caruso, however, his recordings were from American masters and after 1905 virtually all red seal recordings were pressed from American masters.

Caruso's recordings spurred a demand by the international public to see the great singer perform and he embarked on world tours for the next few years. In 1906, Caruso just happened to be in San Francisco the day of the fateful earthquake. Upon arriving in the city and stopping at the front desk of his hotel to get a key, Caruso drew a firearm and threatened to shoot two Chinese porters who had arrived to take his trunks to his room. He thought they were stealing them. Caruso was in his room when the quake struck. His manager rushed to his room to check on him. He found Caruso cowered in a corner crying in fright. Caruso told him the quake had been so terrifying that he was afraid he had lost his voice permanently. His manager told him to go to the window and lean out and sing his heart out. Caruso threw open the window and sang at the top of his voice to the utter astonishment of the people milling about several stories below pulling bodies from under wreckage and ruins. That had to be an utterly surreal moment.









1908 Victrola ad for the Victor III. A victrola and a gramophone are the same thing. Americans called them victrolas and the Brits called them gramophones.









After the batwing design was retired, Victor went with plainer labels.

By the mid-1920s, electric recordings became the standard and the Victor labels underwent another change. The term "orthophonic" meant simply that the recording was electric and meant to be played on an orthophonic system which had a 9-ft long bass horn folded up inside. The sound for its time was superb. To more easily identify an orthophonic recording, Victor put a "VE" at the top and bottom of the label. The recording of classical music had been taken to a whole new level.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Fascinating topic Victor, thanks for sharing all your knowledge.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2017)

I had mentioned the orthophonic recordings and meant to show an image but didn't so here it is.


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## rhubarbsuburb (Apr 21, 2017)

Brilliant contribution; what a terrific read; thanks for posting.

Muslim sensitivities notwithstanding (and no offense intended to Muslim forum members), it is only after one has tried to obedience train a cherub that a genuine appreciation for Nipper can be fully understood.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2017)

In 1929, the stock market crashed and people lost their shirts. Many companies and businesses that had been doing fine were suddenly on very shaky ground. Many folded--among them was Edison Records. Edison made very fine products but were terrible at recognizing trends and capitalizing on windfall opportunities and they paid for it. The Victor Talking Machine Company suddenly found itself between a rock and a hard place. People simply weren't going to be buying many records when they are unemployed. Many wouldn't even have electricity. But Victor had a lot to offer. They had put out millions of records, had a stable of superb talent and an excellent facility in Camden that had sprung up around Eldridge Johnson's old machine shop. It was now a state-of-the-art facility for recording and experimentation with new technologies. The Radio Corporation of America--RCA--set its eyes on that facility and a merger was hammered out. So before 1929 was out, the new labels bore the name RCA Victor and Nipper remained the trademark.


















The classic red seal that I grew up with. The first I ever saw used was this style of label. My parents had a number of them and some of my earliest Christmas presents that I can remember were Victor Red Seals of classical pieces that my parents wanted me to listen to. I remember one was a Chopin album that had a piece that my mother introduced me to as "I Am Always Chasing Rainbows" because of the Judy Garland thing but it was Fantasie-Impromptu, Op. 66 and I had Nutcracker, Peter & the Wolf, etc. These may not all have been red seals because I had some Everett labels as well. This will always be THE red seal to me.









The label changed when RCA-Victor came up with the Dynagroove process for their vinyls in 1963.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2017)

Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft or DGG was started by Emile Berliner in 1898. It was originally allied with Victor and British Gramophone until the outbreak of WW1. DDG has been staunchly classical since its founding with occasional forays into less mainstream material.









DGG was bought by Siemens & Halske electronics in 1941. Notice "His Master's Voice" is written German.









Electrola started in 1926 under DGG. In 1949, DGG sold its rights to the German portion of "His Master's Voice" to Electrola which began began using it as a trademark.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2017)

After selling its rights to "His Master's Voice" DGG redid its label via Siemens advertising. This is as it looks today. DGG is owned today by UMG and is the oldest continuously operating label in the world.









Archiv Produktion is a DGG venture that produces superb albums of baroque, medieval music, Gregorian chants and the like.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2017)

Eventually, the angel got his own label as well.









It was eventually bought up by EMI and the label looked like this in the 70s. I had a great many Angel vinyls in my collection--all classical works. The Angel label is no longer active and its recordings are now available as part of EMI Classics. It is possible Angel will be reactivated again but when is anybody's guess.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Victor Redseal said:


> Eventually, the angel got his own label as well.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Angel was always owned by EMI as far as I know. EMI Classics no longer exists. Warner brought them out, but Warner does not have rights to the EMI or Angel names. Recordings from the EMI catalog are now published under the Warner Classics or Erato labels.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2017)

Angel Records was EMI but the trademark was obtained because EMI is, itself, formed from a merger between the Gramophone Company and European Columbia Graphophone in 1931. They built the Abbey Road studio which is apparently the first true dedicated recording studio in the world. That makes sense since I can't think of a dedicated studio in the US before that. Most of the country blues were recorded in hotel rooms or in H C. Speir's upstairs at his store. Jazz was recorded in hotel ballrooms or warehouses such as Gennett which had to schedule sessions between the running of trains which ran past the warehouse. So EMI was always in some way linked to Berliner and Victor. In fact, the original "His Master's Voice" painting by Francis Barraud is at EMI HQ which I believe is in Gloucester.

The Erato information makes sense since Erato was an imprint or vanity label for Victor Red Seal in the early 50s. I wrote this article probably around 2008 or so when EMI Classics still existed. It was embroiled in trademark disputes even then. There is or was also an EMI Records which started in '72 and is or was Japanese. But then Victor is now a Japanese company and has been for some time now. JVC (Japanese Victor Company) is part of Victor Entertainment but the HMV stores are not being English-owned. JVC uses Nipper but HMV uses only the Gramophone in Japan. But HMV in England uses Nipper and gramophone.

But thanks for the update. I should have checked myself but I'm lazy.


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## Guest (Jul 7, 2017)

Among the artists signed to VRS:

Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, Boston Pops/Arthur Fiedler, Pierre Boulez, Julian Bream, Tommy Dorsey, Pierre Monteux, Seiji Ozawa, Eugene Ormandy, Alfred Cortot, Enrico Caruso, Jose Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, Van Cliburn, Placido Domingo, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Nelson Eddy, Geraldine Farrar, Marisa Robles, Arthur Rubenstein, Renee Fleming, Eugene Fodor, Virgil Fox, James Galway, Andres Segovia, Robert Shaw/Choir, Leonard Slatkin, Ofra Harnoy, Vladimir Horowitz, Jose Iturbi, Isao Tomita, Jascha Haifetz, Arturo Toscanini, Juilliard String Quartet, Herbert Von Karajan, Alfred Wallenstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Fritz Kreisler, Mario Lanza, Efrem Zimbalist, Julian Lloyd Webber, William Kapell, Jon Vickers, Paarvo Jarvi, Tokyo Quartet, Alma Gluck, Peter Serkin, Leontyne Price, Andre Previn, Josef Pasternack, Birgit Nilsson

Just a very small sampling. When we add in artists from Angel, DGG, Archiv, Erato and other related labels, that is a tremendous amount of classical music covering virtually every period of its existence.


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## Guest (Jul 7, 2017)

The Camden facility was located at 1 Market Street. Visible here is Building 17 a.k.a. "The Nipper Building." The facility was started in 1906 and completed in 1916. The Camden facility, of which Building 17 was only part, became a major employer and was basically a mini-city from which many major innovations in recording and communication technology originated. All Victor and RCA Victor records were pressed here. The radio backpacks used by the Apollo astronauts were designed and built here.









By the 80s, Camden facility was obsolete and was closed down. Camden never really recovered from the loss of the RCA Victor plant (even though Campbell's Soups are also HQ'd in Camden). Building 17 was a near total loss but was declared historical. Using investment tax credit, Building 17 was converted to a complex of 341 loft apartments owned by Dranoff Properties who acquired the building in 2003 saving the structure from complete deterioration. The renovation cost $65 million. Even the stained glass windows were replaced with perfect replicas.









The tower of Building 17 has huge stained glass images of "His Master's Voice" on all four sides and hence the colloquialism of "the Nipper Building." The original windows were built by D'Acenzo Studios of Philadelphia and installed in 1915. The windows were removed in 1968 when RCA Victor dropped Nipper from its logo and replaced with plywood bearing the new logo. Due to public demand, Nipper was reinstated as the logo in 1976 and D'Acenzo Studios built new stained glass windows, exact replicas, which were installed in 1978. These were vandalized after the shutdown and had to be rebuilt yet again.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

cool thread !!!


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Isn't Nipper actually sitting on his master's coffin in the original painting? (Talk about dark.) Also, there were metal discs with holes punched in them for large music boxes. These mostly seem to be about the same timeframe, about 1890, but maybe they have earlier roots. Although the material and manufacturing needs are obviously very different, I wonder if one was influenced by the other.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Yes, very cool thread. The RCA Red Seal Label is so familiar to me going back to my early childhood. My impression of the RCA LPs was that the sound engineering was excellent, but, in America, the vinyl quality was awful.

It was very sad to see the RCA moniker become a bought and sold nameplate on cheap televisions and other electronics, not unlike Polaroid.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

DaveM said:


> Yes, very cool thread. The RCA Red Seal Label is so familiar to me going back to my early childhood. My impression of the RCA LPs was that the sound engineering was excellent, but, in America, the vinyl quality was awful.
> 
> It was very sad to see the RCA moniker become a bought and sold nameplate on cheap televisions and other electronics, not unlike Polaroid.


RCA Dynaflex records don't bother me as much as Dynagroove records. Dynagroove is a disaster, IMO. Maybe some people like it or don't notice it though.

It is a shame to see the once innovative RCA brand now reduced to a licensed name put on [often] cut-rate electronics. Oh well, that's how it goes. We see the same thing with many other famous electronics brands from back in the day.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Here is the statue of Nipper that is now at the Maryland Historical Society.









It was apparently made in Baltimore by the Triangle Sign Company in 1954 and weights 1,700 lbs. It sat on the roof of the D&H Distribution Company at its headquarters on Russell Street, in Baltimore, until 1974. (D&H was a distributor for RCA.)


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## Guest (Jul 11, 2017)

The metal discs with the holes were for music boxes--not the little things you keep on your coffee table but a type of nickelodeon. It's really more akin to the CD than to the gramophone disc. The holes are simply ons and offs--binary language. CDs have microscopic "pits." When the laser on the read head traces over the CD surface, it either encounters reflective area or a pit. If the surface reflects, it bounces the beam back to the head and registers as a 1. If the laser encounters a pit, the beam falls through it and isn't reflected back and so registers as a 0. Ons and offs once again.

With a record disc, the stylus rides in a continuous groove. The walls of the groove are bumpy so as the stylus rides through the groove, it get pushed this way and that. The stylus is mounted on a cantilever so it mimics the bumps in the walls of the groove and a magnet attached to the stylus inside the cartridge moves around accordingly. There are four coils mounted in the cartridge and the magnet will sometimes move towards one or away from it. This causes a fluctuating magnetic field and this fluctuation induces a voltage in the coil. A steady field won't do anything. It MUST change. That is the basis of all generated voltage--a conductor moving through a field or a field moving near a conductor. So each coil produces an electrical signal and these are sent to the amplifier. The four signals are combined into two-channel stereo.

Now a gramophone is different because it is non-electric. Just the stylus riding in a groove produces an audible sound which is very faint but the horn amplifies it (and very loudly, I might add, you would be surprised how loud they are). You can do this with a modern electrically recorded disc. Put in on a turntable and let it spin. Take a sheet of paper and roll it into a cone. Make the tapered end of the cone as small and sharp as possible. Stick it in the groove of the record and it will play rather loudly! It will ruin the record but it will play.









In 1968, RCA Victor decided to get rid of Nipper. In fact, they got rid of the black label for a while. I don't know what they were thinking. There was a lot of outcry. I remember writing them a letter of complaint about it. So they brought Nipper back in '76 (four years after I wrote them) but kept the new fonts and layout. Below, the Nipper-less red seal and the new red seal with Nipper added back in.









The red seals were still Victor products but the name was excluded from the label because of legal problems with Japanese Victor which was buying Victor out at the time. Victor today is a Japanese company and has been for some time.


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## Guest (Jul 11, 2017)

Oh, yes, I've heard about the gramophone sitting on a coffin but it's just a tale. Sounds cool though.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I don't think it is actually a myth. I have seen reproductions of what seem to be the original painting, and it is pretty clear that the dog is standing on a large, long, tapered box with a flat lid and deep sides. If it isn't mean to be a coffin, I don't know what it is. (I certainly have not seen a table that looks like that.) The fact that the surface on which the dog is sitting is often changed between various uses of the image suggest that they are intentionally trying to distance themselves from something.


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## Guest (Jul 16, 2017)

JAS said:


> I don't think it is actually a myth. I have seen reproductions of what seem to be the original painting, and it is pretty clear that the dog is standing on a large, long, tapered box with a flat lid and deep sides. If it isn't mean to be a coffin, I don't know what it is. (I certainly have not seen a table that looks like that.) The fact that the surface on which the dog is sitting is often changed between various uses of the image suggest that they are intentionally trying to distance themselves from something.


You mean this?










Nah. Those kinds of tables were very common in the 19th century:



















19th century coffins were rarely that square and rarely had such flat, plain tops and were certainly not that wide:


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

It's interesting that in the orchestra playing in The History of Vinyl documentary, there are no women. It's a wonderment that women must have learned to play instruments sometime after 1948!


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Victor Redseal said:


> 19th century coffins were rarely that square and rarely had such flat, plain tops and were certainly not that wide.


Your knowledge about Redseal is admirable. Your knowledge of 19th century coffins appears to be terribly lacking. There are many examples that are as elegant as any piece of furniture. (Flat tops are common, but lots of variety existed.) None of the tables taper, although this is admittedly a matter of perception. (One of the table you posted is a work table, not suitable for a parlor, and the other is a common table with a folding top, which leaves a distinct edge. I have several of these myself.) I am not sure why there is such a resistance to even the idea that it is a coffin given that we are already told that he is listening to his dead master's voice. The 19th century was not so squeamish about death or its accoutrements. (Look up memento mori, which has a long tradition.)


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## Guest (Jul 16, 2017)

JAS said:


> Your knowledge about Redseal is admirable. Your knowledge of 19th century coffins appears to be terribly lacking. There are many examples that are as elegant as any piece of furniture. (Flat tops are common, but lots of variety existed.) None of the tables taper, although this is admittedly a matter of perception. (One of the table you posted is a work table, not suitable for a parlor, and the other is a common table with a folding top, which leaves a distinct edge. I have several of these myself.) I am not sure why there is such a resistance to even the idea that it is a coffin given that we are already told that he is listening to his dead master's voice. The 19th century was not so squeamish about death or its accoutrements. (Look up memento mori, which has a long tradition.)


This is the original painting:









There is no way you can say that it is a coffin.









Here is the original gramophone painting. Sorry but that is a table.









This is the one that people think is a coffin. I have a full color 2ft x 3ft perfect reproduction of this that cost me a mint. It's hard to see it because of the texture of the painting but it is a folding table. If you look at a large, high quality reproduction, you can see the folding joint but it's kind of dim or blurred. You can order these reproductions off the internet--that's what I did, they're pricey--and see it for yourself.









Here I tried to take a photo of the poster I have and it's hard to capture but you can see that the crease in the table is a folding joint.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

And so we continue to disagree. It hardly matters. I would say that it is not _clearly_ a coffin, but neither is it clearly _not_ a coffin. It mostly surprises me how ardently the very idea seems to rankle a few.


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## Guest (Jul 16, 2017)

DaveM said:


> It's interesting that in the orchestra playing in The History of Vinyl documentary, there are no women. It's a wonderment that women must have learned to play instruments sometime after 1948!


Yes, I noticed that too. If you go to youtube, you will find clips of all-female novelty and vaudeville bands and these ladies are very accomplished musicians often playing several instruments equally well. They simply couldn't get gigs in established orchestras because they were women. Now it's hard to imagine orchestras without female musicians. Then you look back at classical music and how many female composers were there? Clara Schumann? You can literally count them on one hand if not one finger. My instructor is grateful for female musicians since about half his students are girls learning double bass, bass guitar or both. There are a couple that he says are easily orchestral grade musicians and he had another one that did get into an small city orchestra and has since become a backup bassist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra! Think of all the wasted talent over the years.


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