 1898 ad for the New Standard Phonograph | |
| Formerly | National Phonograph Company |
|---|---|
| Founded | 29 January 1896 |
| Founder | Thomas Edison |
| Defunct | 2 January 1957 |
Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated (originally the National Phonograph Company) was the main holding company for the various manufacturing companies established by the inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison. It was a successor to Edison Manufacturing Company and operated between 1911 and 1957, when it merged with McGraw Electric to form McGraw-Edison.
The National Phonograph Company was incorporated on 27 January 1896. It was restructured and reincorporated as Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on 28 February 1911. [1] Edison Manufacturing Company also became a division of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. at this time. [2]
The company had an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey where up to 200 people were employed in the "rapid and cheap development of inventions." [3] Frank L. Dyer was president until December 1912, when Thomas Edison took over the position himself. C.H. Wilson, general manager, was also vice president from 1912. Edison resigned as president in August 1926 in favor of his son, Charles Edison, and became chairman of the board. [4]
The company had divisions handling different products such as phonographs, Ediphone, and storage batteries. One of the first products were Blue Amberol cylinders and the Amberola player, an early sound recording medium and player. This was followed by the Edison Diamond Disc. In 1915 the soprano Anna Case and contralto Christine Miller showed in a tone test at the West Orange lab that there was no difference between their live voices and Diamond Disc recordings of their voices. [4] Other Edison companies were absorbed in the years that followed, including Edison Phonograph Works (28 August 1924), Edison Storage Battery Company (30 June 1932) and Emark Battery Corporation (30 December 1933). [1]
In the 1920s the recording company began to lag in technical innovation, and also failed to attract recording stars of the same quality as its rivals Victor and Columbia. An attempt to market a long playing record in 1926 did not succeed, and the company did not begin recording electrically (with condenser microphones) until mid-1927, two years after the rest of the industry had adopted the process. In 1928 the company finally moved into radio with the purchase of the Splitdorf Radio Corp. On 1 November 1929 Edison halted production of records apart from dictation records made by the Voicewriter division. [4] In the late 1920s the "Edicraft" line of high-quality consumer appliances was developed at the laboratory and manufactured by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Production of appliances was discontinued in 1934 due to lack of demand for luxury goods during the Great Depression. [3]
Max McGraw, founder and president of McGraw Electric, had always been an admirer of Thomas Alva Edison, and had his picture hanging in his office. In 1956 he arranged a meeting with his son Charles Edison, former Governor of New Jersey and Secretary of the Navy, to discuss merging their two companies. They spent a few days at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado and came to an agreement. [5] The merger was effective 2 January 1957. The combined company was named the McGraw-Edison Company. [1] Max McGraw would joke after the merger that his name now appeared before Edison's on the New York Stock Exchange. [6]
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone or since the 1940s called a record player, is a device for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, very faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring horn, or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope-type earphones.
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman who has been described as America's greatest inventor. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity, these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface, which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.
The Gramophone Company Limited , based in the United Kingdom and founded on behalf of Emil Berliner, was one of the early recording companies, the parent organisation for the His Master's Voice (HMV) label, and the European affiliate of the American Victor Talking Machine Company. Although the company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931 to form Electric and Musical Industries Limited (EMI), its name "The Gramophone Company Limited" continued in the UK into the 1970s.
Edison Records was one of the early record labels that pioneered sound recording and reproduction, and was an important player in the early recording industry.
Blue Amberol Records was the trademark name for cylinder records manufactured by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in the US from 1912 to 1929. They replaced the 4-minute black wax Amberol cylinders introduced in 1908, which had replaced the 2-minute wax cylinders that had been the standard format since the late 1880s. Blue Amberols can play for as long as 4 minutes and 45 seconds and have a surface layer of the "indestructible" plastic celluloid, which Edison tinted a trademark blue color. Edison brand phonographs designed to play Amberol cylinders were named Amberolas.
The Edison Diamond Disc Record is a type of phonograph record marketed by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on their Edison Record label from 1912 to 1929. They were named Diamond Discs because the matching Edison Disc Phonograph was fitted with a permanent conical diamond stylus for playing them. Diamond Discs were incompatible with lateral-groove disc record players, e.g. the Victor Victrola, the disposable steel needles of which would damage them while extracting hardly any sound. Uniquely, they are just under 1⁄4 in thick.
The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States.
The Edison Storage Battery Company was organized in New Jersey on May 27, 1901, to develop, manufacture, and sell the Thomas A Edison, Inc Edison Storage Battery Division label.
Toastmaster is a brand name for home appliances. It was originally (1921) the name of one of the world's first automatic electric toasters for home use, the Toastmaster Model 1-A-1. Since then the Toastmaster brand has been used on a wide range of small kitchen appliances, such as coffeemakers, waffle irons, toasters, and blenders.
The Edison Manufacturing Company was a company organized in 1889 by the inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison that manufactured batteries, machinery and equipment, and also produced kinetoscope films. Its assets and operations were transferred to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1911.
Canadian General Electric was a Canadian manufacturer of various electrical products. It was the Canadian counterpart of the American company General Electric. The unit became General Electric Canada in 1989, and is now known as GE Canada.
The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, and other components of the electrical illumination system being built by Thomas A. Edison in New York City.
The Edison–Lalande cell was a type of alkaline primary battery developed by Thomas Edison from an earlier design by Felix Lalande and Georges Chaperon. It consisted of plates of copper oxide and zinc in a solution of potassium hydroxide. The cell voltage was low but the internal resistance was also low so these cells were capable of delivering large currents.
McGraw-Edison was an American manufacturer of electrical equipment. It was created in 1957 through a merger of McGraw Electric and Thomas A. Edison, Inc., and was in turn acquired by Cooper Industries in 1985. Today, the McGraw-Edison brand is used on industrial, commercial, and institutional lighting products.
Max McGraw was an American entrepreneur who founded McGraw-Edison and Centel. He financed marketing of the first domestic toaster, the Toastmaster. He was also a conservationist and hunter.
The McGraw Electric Company was a US manufacturer of electric appliances founded by Max McGraw in 1900. It grew through mergers and acquisitions to become a major enterprise. The best known product may have been the Toastmaster pop-up toaster. In 1957 McGraw Electric merged with Thomas A. Edison, Inc. to form McGraw-Edison.
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 financial problems, it set the stage for the modern recording industry in the mid 1890s.
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