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Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime   Vintage phonographs and records   Phonographs a big draw for Canadian collectors   By Mike Bryan As a Wayback Times reader, you probably appreciate the fun that can be had from collecting antiques.   It often starts with one item that takes our fancy. Then we do a bit of research on it, finding some interesting history and learning there are many models and different styles of our prized item out there somewhere.   Although we are not really looking for another - we are - and when we find it, we have to buy it. From that point on, there's no turning back.   And so it is with antique phonographs and records. The sight and sound of an elegant antique phonograph with its morning glory horn, playing music recorded 100 years ago, evokes feelings of those times and makes us smile.   Perhaps that is what draws all kinds of people, over 200 of them, to the Canadian Antique Phonograph Society. More on this later, but first let's look at the origins of the phonograph and its evolution.   Life Before Recorded Sound Imagine your life without hearing any recorded sound. It's hard to do, because recorded music, film, TV, radio and messages surround us every day. Before Thomas Edison’s phonograph invention made sound recording possible, the only way to hear the band, the singer or the announcement was to be there listening to it live.   So in the grand scheme of things, the phonograph or “talking machine” was a pretty significant invention. Few homes today in Canada are untouched by recorded sound playing through some form of successor to the antique phonograph.   The Big Three The phonograph was invented in 1877 by an American, Thomas Edison. His first machines are known as Tin-Foil Phonographs, because the sound was recorded and played back on tin foil (not unlike aluminum kitchen foil) wrapped around a metal cylinder.   Telephone inventor and two-time Canadian resident, Alexander Graham Bell, was another driving force in recorded sound development. He funded his cousin, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter, to work on improving Edison’s invention.   They created a cardboard cylinder coated with wax as a more permanent recording medium. Bell and Tainter also designed phonographs that they named “graphophones” to distinguish them from Edison’s machines. Later their American Graphophone Company reorganized to become the Columbia Phonograph Company.   A third inventor, who influenced the future of recorded sound, was Emile Berliner, a German immigrant to the USA. Berliner followed the same principles as Edison and Bell and Tainter, but chose a flat disc as the format for recording. This proved to be a wise choice, as it soon became clear that mass production, storage and transportation of disc records were far easier than for fragile, bulky wax cylinders.   Berliner developed a machine to play his flat discs and named it the “gramophone.” By the way, in North America today Edison, Victor and Columbia disc and cylinder machines would all be described generically as “phonographs.”   Nipper the Dog The company that had manufactured Berliner’s gramophones for him in Camden, NJ, changed its name in 1901 to the Victor Talking Machine Company and soon became the world’s leading manufacturer of gramophones and records. Berliner had got himself into a legal tangle that resulted in him being prohibited from selling his gramophones in the USA.   So he came to Canada and set up his Berliner Gram-o-Phone Company in Montreal. On a visit to England in 1899, Emile Berliner acquired a painting of a dog listening to one of his gramophones. He registered the image of “Nipper” cocking its ear at the sound coming from the gramophone’s horn, listening to “His Master’s Voice.” This enduring image is still one of the world’s most widely recognized trademarks.   Cylinder vs Disc Format By 1903, it became clear that the disc format would win out over the cylinder format for the reasons stated earlier. Nevertheless, Edison battled on with improvements in cylinder technology, from two-minute wax cylinders to four-minute Amberol wax and later Blue Amberol celluloid cylinders, which are the only ones that can be played on most Edison Amberola phonographs. Edison cylinder machines remained available until around 1920 and cylinders were sold until the demise of his phonograph business in 1929.   Recognizing the growing preference for disc phonographs, Edison did, however, introduce a disc phonograph line with special thick records, known as Diamond Discs. These could only be played on an Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph.   Columbia launched disc graphophones in 1901 and by around 1910 had abandoned its cylinder phonograph business. It continued successfully with disc machines, some named “Grafonola.”   Victor never strayed from its roots, manufacturing only disc phonographs and records throughout its history.   Finding and Identifying Phonographs Early cylinder phonographs that can still be found quite easily today are the Edison Standard, Fireside, Home, Gem, Triumph models and the popular internal horn Amberola 30. The name can be found on a metal plates fixed to the top surface of the phonograph.   Columbia’s cylinder models are less easily identified by name, because unlike Edison and Victor machines, they did not carry name plates. This applies to both Columbia disc and cylinder machines.   Victor phonographs, and the Canadian-made Berliner models, carry a metal plate that shows model and serial numbers. A model number example is VI for Victor 1, an external horn phonograph.   Internal horn models were known as Victor Victrolas with VV before the Roman or Arabic model number, e.g. VV IX and VV 100.   The term Victrola is sometimes mistakenly used to describe any internal horn phonograph, but of course, Victrolas were only made by the Victor Talking Machine Company.   After about 1910, internal horn table top and floor model phonographs became the preferred modern style.   As the Big Threes’ patents expired, other companies, such as Brunswick and Sonora, entered the market. Many companies in the musical instrument or furniture-making business jumped on the bandwagon, too, selling mainly floor model phonographs often with Phono … or …“ola” in their names.   By the 1920s, the availability of electricity and the introduction of commercial radio spelled the end of the acoustic phonograph era, except in niche markets for portable and toy machines. A new era of radio/phonograph combination models with far superior sound was unfolding, and it was one in which the 78rpm disc record survived right through to the 1950s.   Canadian Antique Phonograph Society There's a sizable community of antique phonograph and record lovers who have fun collecting and restoring phonographs, learning about the history, the pop stars of the day and of course, the great music. They can help and guide novice collectors on buying a phonograph, spotting bad repairs and avoiding fake machines, commonly known among disdainful collectors as “Crapophones” and which are assembled in Asia from junk parts.   Photographs 1 - Victor VI disc phonograph c 1904   2 - Tin foil phonograph   3 - Berliner's trademark Nipper the Dog   4 - Edison Amberola 30 cylinder phonograph c 1915   Mike Bryan, past president of the Canadian Antique Phonograph Society (CAPS), can be reached at 905-727-2979, or e-mail mike@brycorp.ca.     Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2009 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster