Little Wonder Records was a United States budget record label from 1914 through 1923. The label was known for producing one-sided records with abbreviated versions of songs at a very low price.
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears—a joint venture between the Canadian Simpsons department store chain and the American Sears chain—which operated a national mail order business and co-branded Simpsons-Sears stores modelled after those of Sears in the U.S. After the Hudson's Bay Company purchased Simpsons in 1978, the joint venture was dismantled and Hudson's Bay sold its shares in the joint venture to Sears; with Sears now fully owning the company, it was renamed Sears Canada Inc. in 1984. In 1999, Sears Canada acquired the remaining assets and locations of the historic Canadian chain Eaton's. From 2014, Sears Holdings owned a 10% share in the company. ESL Investments was the largest shareholder of Sears Canada.
Conqueror Records was a United States-based record label, active from 1928 through 1942. The label was sold exclusively through Sears, Roebuck and Company.
Oxford Records was a record label active in the United States of America from roughly 1906 until 1916. The label was produced for Sears by several labels, including Columbia and Albany Indestructible Cylinders for cylinders and Leeds & Catlin, Zon-O-Phone, and Columbia for discs. No recording activity was undertaken by Sears. All discs were single-sided.
Oriole Records was an American record label founded in 1921 by McCrory's stores.
Supertone Records was an American record label in the 1920s. Supertone Records were marketed by Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1924 and again in 1929–1931. Supertone was one of several record disc brand names marketed by Sears. Supertone records were initially made by the Fletcher Record Company in 1924. The discs produced by Fletcher included midwestern dance bands. When Fletcher failed in mid–1924, Bridgeport Die & Machine Company began producing Supertone discs in late 1924.
Wire recording, also known as magnetic wire recording, was the first magnetic recording technology, an analog type of audio storage. It recorded sound signals on a thin steel wire using varying levels of magnetization. The first crude magnetic recorder was invented in 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen. The first magnetic recorder to be made commercially available anywhere was the Telegraphone, manufactured by the American Telegraphone Company, Springfield, Massachusetts in 1903.
Danelectro is a brand of musical instruments and accessories, founded in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1947. The company is known primarily for its string instruments that employed unique designs and manufacturing processes. The Danelectro company was sold to the "Music Corporation of America" (MCA) in 1966, moving to a much larger plant in Neptune City, New Jersey, employing more than 500 people. Nevertheless, three years later Danelectro closed its plant.
Julius Rosenwald was a Jewish American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in matching funds to promote vocational or technical education. In 1919 he was appointed to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. He was also the principal founder and backer for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, to which he gave more than $5 million and served as president from 1927 to 1932.
Western Auto Supply Company—known more widely as Western Auto—was a specialty retail chain of stores that supplied automobile parts and accessories operating approximately 1,200 stores across the United States.
The Complete Stone Roses is a compilation of singles and B-sides by English rock band The Stone Roses. It was released in 1995 without the band's input by their record company Silvertone, with whom they were embroiled in a protracted legal battle to terminate their five-year contract.
Sears Modern Homes were houses sold primarily through mail order catalog by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer.
Silvertone is a brand created and promoted by Sears for its line of consumer electronics and musical instruments from 1916 to 1972. The rights to the Silvertone brand were purchased by South Korean corporation Samick Music in 2001. Samick made new musical instruments under the Silvertone brand and relaunched some historic models. In 2020, RBI Music was appointed the exclusive worldwide distributor of the Silvertone brand.
The Harmony Company is a former guitar manufacturing company that is currently a brand owned by Singapore-based BandLab Technologies. Harmony was, in its heyday, the largest musical instrument manufacturer in the United States. It made many types of string instruments, including ukuleles, acoustic and electric guitars and violins.
Challenge Records was a record label sold by the Sears-Roebuck Company. Releases were drawn from other recordings on other labels in the late 1920s, such as Banner, Gennett, Paramount Records and others. Sears also had the Silvertone label and the same recording of "Black Bottom" by Joe Candullo & his Everglades Orchestra was released on both labels. Around 1929 Sears did away with Challenge and Silvertone, replacing them with Conqueror Records. Challenge discs generally sold for less than Silvertone ones because they seldom used songs requiring royalty payments and the label generally assigned pseudonyms to the artists. Introduced in the Spring 1927 catalog for just 24¢ per disc, Challenge bore the frank disclaimer, "If you want the best, we recommend the Silvertone." The last issues appeared in Sears’ Spring 1931 catalog.
Kit houses, also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses,mail order homes, or catalog homes, were a type of housing that was popular in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the first half of the 20th century. Kit house manufacturers sold houses in many different plans and styles, from simple bungalows to imposing Colonials, and supplied at a fixed price all materials needed for construction of a particular house, but typically excluding brick, concrete, or masonry. Some house styles, like log cabins and geodesic dome homes, are still sometimes sold in kit form.
Teldec is a German record label in Hamburg, Germany. Today the label is a property of Warner Music Group.
The Stevens Model 520 was a pump-action shotgun developed by John Browning and originally manufactured by the J Stevens Arms & Tool Company between 1909 and 1916. Stevens was sold to New England Westinghouse on 28 May 1915 and production of civilian firearms was greatly reduced. The company was renamed the "J Stevens Arms Company" on 1 July 1916 and New England Westinghouse used their manufacturing facility in Chicopee Falls, MA to produce Mosin-Nagant rifles under contract for the Russian Czar during World War I. After the war, Stevens was sold to Savage Arms on 1 April 1920 and full production of civilian firearms resumed. Under Savage ownership, Model 520 production continued until 1939 when it was replaced by the Model 520A which ended production in 1948. Stevens also further modified the design when they introduced the streamlined Model 620 in 1927. The Model 620 was internally similar to the Model 520 and was produced until 1939 when it was replaced by the Model 620A which ended production in 1955. This shotgun is a hammerless, pump action, take-down design with a tubular magazine which holds 5 shells. All models can also be slam fired: the shotgun has no trigger disconnector and shells can be fired one after the other simply by working the slide if the trigger is held down.
