] The United States Phonograph Company was a manufacturer of cylinder phonograph records and supplies in the 1890s. It was formed in the Spring of 1893 by Victor Emerson, manager of the New Jersey Phonograph Company. Simon S. Ott and George E. Tewkesbury, heads of the Kansas Phonograph Company and inventors of an automatic phonograph joined later. It was based in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the List of municipalities in New Jersey, most populous City (New Jersey), city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, the county seat of Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, and a principal city of the New York metropolitan area. ...

. After the collapse of the

North American Phonograph Company The North American Phonograph Company was an early attempt to commercialize the maturing technologies of sound recording in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Though the company was largely unsuccessful in its goals due to legal, technical and financ ...

in August 1894, the United States Phonograph Company became one of the industry's largest suppliers of records, competing mostly with the

Columbia Phonograph Company Columbia Records is an American recor ...

who had joined with the American Graphophone Company to manufacture

graphophone The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was initially designed at the Volta Laboratory and Bureau, Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States. It was co ...

s (at this point nearly identical to

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 ...

s), blank wax cylinders, and original and duplicate records. The USPC manufactured duplicates as well, which allowed their recording program to reach the scale of competing with Columbia's. Their central location and proximity to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

allowed them to record the most popular artists of the 1890s, including George J. Gaskin,

Dan W. Quinn Daniel William Quinn ( 1859 – November 7, 1938) was an American tenor. He was one of the first American singers to become popular in the new medium of recorded music. Quinn was a very successful recording artist whose career spanned from 1892 ...

Len Spencer Leonard Garfield Spencer (February 12, 1867 – December 15, 1914) was an American singer, composer, booking agent and vaudeville star who was considered one of the most popular recording artists in the United States from the 1890s to the 1910s. ...

Russell Hunting Russell Dinsmore Hunting (May 8, 1864 – February 20, 1943) was an American comic entertainer, pioneer sound recordist, and an influential figure in the early years of the recorded music industry. He was described as "the most popular pre-190 ...

and

Issler's Orchestra Issler's Orchestra was an early recording ensemble, and perhaps the first popular band. The group formed in the fall of 1889 at the Edison Laboratory Because the purpose of the group was only to make recordings, it had only four or five perform ...

. Emerson left the company to lead Columbia's recording department around the summer of 1896. In 1897 the USPC worked with Edison's National Phonograph Company to retrofit phonographs with spring motors invented by Frank Capps. The convenience and cost savings of spring-motor phonographs like these helped shift the phonograph from a public entertainment (in parlors or exhibitions) to a consumer good. In October 1899 the company was prohibited by court order from manufacturing duplicate records, and they began supplying original records for the National Phonograph Company /span> /span> /span> /span> /nowiki>. The later U.S. Phonograph Company of Cleveland Ohio is unrelated.

References

{{reflist American companies established in 1893 Phonograph manufacturers Manufacturing companies based in Newark, New Jersey Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States