The Gramophone Company Limited was a British

phonograph A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...

manufacturer and

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

, founded in April 1898 by Emil Berliner. It was one of the earliest record labels. The company purchased the

His Master's Voice His Master's Voice is an entertainment trademark featuring a dog named Nipper, curiously peering into the horn of a wind-up gramophone. Painted by Francis Barraud in 1898, the image has since become a global symbol used across consumer elect ...

painting and trademark rights in 1899, using its artwork and creating the

sub-label for its phonographs and releases in 1909, replacing its previous "Recording Angel" trademark. The company had an affiliation with the American

Victor Talking Machine Company The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer, incorporated in 1901. Victor was an independent enterprise until 1929 when it was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and became ...

, who also began using the artwork. In 1931, The Gramophone Company partnered with the

Columbia Graphophone Company Columbia Graphophone Co. Ltd. was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1917 as an offshoot of the American Columbia Phonograph Company, it became an independent British-owned company in 1922 in a managem ...

to form Electric and Musical Industries Limited (EMI). The Gramophone Company continued as one of EMI's music labels until 1973, when its legal entity was renamed to EMI Records Limited. The

label continued until 1993, when it was replaced by

EMI Classics EMI Classics was a record label founded by Thorn EMI in 1990 to reduce the need to create country-specific packaging and catalogues for internationally distributed classical music releases. After Thorn EMI demerged in 1996, its recorded mus ...

History

The Gramophone Company was founded in April 1898 by William Barry Owen and Edmund Trevor Lloyd Wynne Williams, commissioned by Emil Berliner, in London. Owen was acting as agent for

Emile Berliner Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) originally Emil Berliner, was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc gramophone record, record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American En ...

, inventor of the

gramophone record A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The g ...

, whilst Williams provided the finances. Most of the company's early discs were made in

Hanover, Germany Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest in northern Germany after Berlin, Hamburg and Breme ...

at a plant operated by members of Berliner's family, though it had operations around the world. In 1898,

Fred Gaisberg Frederick William Gaisberg (1 January 1873 – 2 September 1951) was an American musician, recording engineer and one of the earliest classical music producers for the gramophone. He did not use the term 'producer', and was not an impresario like ...

moved from the U.S. to London to set up the first disc recording studio in Europe; it was situated in Maiden Lane. Among early artists he recorded was Syria Lamont, an Australian soprano whose single "Coming through the Rye" was one of the first ever issued. In December 1900, Owen gained the manufacturing rights for the Lambert Typewriter Company, and the Gramophone Company was for a few years renamed the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd. This was an attempt to diversify the business model, in response to a series of lawsuits by

Edison Bell Edison Bell was an English company that was the first distributor and an early manufacturer of gramophones and gramophone records. The company survived through several incarnations, becoming a top producer of budget records in England through t ...

Lawsuits

The Berliner Gramophone Company was hit the hardest with a lawsuit that involved a former employee, Frank Seaman. Berliner had hired Seaman, part of The National Gramophone Company, to handle the distribution of record players and disk as an exclusive sales agent. In secret, he started producing a product inferior to the Gramophone, which he called the Zonophone and began solely marketing that instead of the gramophone. Berliner cancelled his contract with The National Gramophone Company, and in turn was sued for breach of contract. In 1900, the U.S. parent of Gramophone lost a patent infringement suit brought on by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

and

Zonophone Zonophone (early on also rendered as Zon-O-Phone) was a record label founded in 1899 in Camden, New Jersey, by Frank Seaman. The Zonophone name was not that of the company but was applied to records and machines sold by Seaman's Universal Talk ...

, and was no longer permitted to produce records in the U.S. The agreement allowed Columbia to produce disc records themselves in the United States, which they began doing in 1901, with the UK Gramophone Company and others continuing to do so outside of the US. Emile Berliner established Berliner Gramophone in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, where he became Victor's Canadian distributor and held the rights in Canada to the "His Master's Voice" trademark.

His Master's Voice

While the general public in the UK came to refer to the records and company as "His Master's Voice" because of the prominence of the phrase on the record labels, The Gramophone Company was never officially incorporated as His Master's Voice. The painting "His Master's Voice" was made in the 1890s with the dog

Nipper Nipper ( – September 1895) was a British dog. He is best known as the subject of ''His Master's Voice'' (1898), painted posthumously by his second owner, Francis Barraud. The painting became a worldwide entertainment trademark, with Nip ...

listening to an Edison cylinder

. In 1899, Owen bought the painting from Francis Barraud, the artist, and asked him to paint out the Edison machine and substitute a Gramophone, which he did. In 1900,

acquired the US rights to the painting and it became the trademark of the

in 1901; the UK rights were retained by the Gramophone Company. Victor utilized the Nipper trademark far more aggressively than the Gramophone Company, first using it on their record labels in 1902. In February 1909, the Gramophone Company introduced new labels featuring the famous trademark known as "

", generally referred to in the UK as HMV, to distinguish them from earlier labels which featured the Recording Angel trademark. The latter had been designed by Theodore Birnbaum, an executive of the Gramophone Company pressing plant in

Recording studios

In the mid-1920s, company chairman Trevor Osmond Williams approved funding for the company to secure property and build a recording studio, putting F. H. Dart from the company's technical recording department in charge of the project. Number 3 Abbey Road was acquired in 1929 and, after nearly 2 years of extensive renovations, the 3-studio facility that would come to be known as EMI Recording Studios (and eventually

Abbey Road Studios Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Recording Studios) is a music recording studio at 3 Abbey Road, London, Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of ...

) opened on 12 November 1931.

Formation of EMI

In March 1931, Gramophone merged with the English Columbia Graphophone Company to form Electric and Musical Industries Ltd (EMI). The "Gramophone Company, Ltd." name, however, continued to be used for many decades, especially for copyright notices on records. From the 1930s onwards, HMV manufactured radio and television sets and radiograms under the HMV and

Marconiphone Marconiphone was an English manufacturer of domestic receiving equipment, notably radio receivers and reel-to-reel tape machines. Early history After World War I, the Marconi Company began producing non-industrial receivers, principally for th ...

brand names in its factory in Hayes,

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, former county in South East England, now mainly within Greater London. Its boundaries largely followed three rivers: the River Thames, Thames in the south, the River Lea, Le ...

. Gramophone Company of India was formed in 1946. The Gramophone Company Ltd legal entity was renamed EMI Records Ltd. in 1973. After EMI was acquired by Universal Music, the company was renamed to Parlophone Records Ltd. and taken over by Warner Music.

Acoustic recordings

From the 1890s to mid-1925, recordings were made without any electrical equipment, relying instead upon the energy inherent in the sound waves generated by the performers, to activate the recording apparatu

References

* Death of Gramophone Pioneer: Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette 13 December 1946 * John R. Bennett: ''A catalogue of vocal recordings from the English catalogues of the Gramophone Company 1898–1899, the Gramophone Company Limited 1899 – 1900, the Gramophone & Typewriter Company Limited 1901–1907 and the Gramophone Company Limited 1907 – 1925''. England, Oakwood Press, 1956. Available a
archive.org
(reprint: Westport, Conn., USA, Greenwood Press, 1978. ) * Alan Kelly: ''His master's voice – La voce del padrone, the Italian catalogue; a complete numerical catalogue of Italian gramophone recordings made from 1898 to 1929 in Italy and elsewhere by the Gramophone Company Ltd.''. New York; NY t al. Greenwood Press, 1988. * Alan Kelly: ''His master's voice, the French catalogue; a complete numerical catalogue of French gramophone recordings made from 1898 to 1929 in France and elsewhere by the Gramophone Company Ltd''. New York; NY t al. Greenwood Press, 1990. * Alan Kelly: ''His master's voice, the German catalogue; a complete numerical catalogue of German gramophone recordings made from 1898 to 1929 in Germany, Austria, and elsewhere by The Gramophone Company Ltd''. New York; NY t al. Greenwood Press, 1994. * Alan Kelly; Jacques Klöters: ''His master's voice, the Dutch catalogue; a complete numerical catalogue of Dutch and Belgian gramophone recordings made from 1900 to 1929 in Holland, Belgium, and elsewhere by the Gramophone Company Ltd''. Westport, Conn. t al. Greenwood Press, 1997. * ''The voice, the magazine of the Gramophone Co., Ltd.'', Hayes, Middlesex, 1.1917 – 35.1954

External links

The Gramophone Company's trademark gramophone 1898

The Gramophone Company Discography
Searchable database of recordings made by the Gramophone Company, and its successor corporations during the 78 RPM era. {{Authority control British jazz record labels 1898 establishments in the United Kingdom 1931 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Record labels established in 1898 Record labels disestablished in 1931 EMI Phonograph manufacturers Audio equipment manufacturers of the United Kingdom