Victor - Biography

Biography - Victor

USA

Precis From Graces Guide.

In 1900 The United States branch of Gramophone lost a patent infringement suit, brought on by Columbia Records and Zonophone, and was no longer permitted to produce records in the USA.

Gramophone's talking machine manufacturer, Eldridge R. Johnson, was left with a large factory, thousands of talking machines and no records to play on them.

He filed suit in 1900 to be permitted to make records himself. He won, in spite of the negative verdict against Berliner's Gramophone Company.

This victory by Johnson inspired him to name the new record company the Victor Talking Machine Company. It was founded formally in 1901, which may have been partly due to a patent-pooling handshake agreement with Columbia that allowed that company to begin producing flat records themselves, which they began doing in 1901.

As Johnson's earlier company (called Consolidated Talking Machine Company) had been making the talking machines for Berliner, it was Johnson who owned a number of mechanical patents. These patents were valuable in the patent pool agreement with Columbia.

So Victor and Columbia began making flat records in America, with UK Gramophone and others continuing to do so outside America.

In 1902 Eldridge Johnson's Victor Talking Machine Company acquired the US rights to use the dog and gramophone as the Victor trademark, and the logo began appearing on Victor records that year (UK rights to the logo were reserved by Gramophone).

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See Also

- majesticrecord.com's fantastic label guide for Victor records.

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