The Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies. The record industry (or recording industry) is the industry that manufactures and distributes mechanical recordings of music. ...

The UK Gramophone Company was founded by William Barry Owen and his partner/investor Trevor Williams in 1897 as the U.K. partner of Emile Berliner's United States based United States Gramophone Company, which had been founded in 1892. In December of 1900 William Owen gained the manufacturing rights for the Lambert Typewriter Company and The Gramophone Company was for a few years renamed to the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd. In 1900, the United States branch of Gramophone lost a patent infringement suit, brought on by Columbia Records, makers of Graphophone, and were no longer permitted to produce records in the USA. Gramophone's talking machine manufacturer, Eldridge Johnson, being left with a large factory and thousands of talking machines with no records to play on them, filed suit that year to be permitted to make records himself, and won, in spite of the negative verdict against Berliner. This victory by Johnson, which victory would be used in naming the new record company he would found the following year, may have been in part due to a patent-pooling handshake agreement with Columbia that allowed the latter to begin producing flat records themselves, which they began doing in 1901, (all Columbia records had previously been cylinders). Contrary to some sources, the Victor Talking Machine Company was never a branch or subsidiary of Gramophone, as Johnson's manufactory, which made talking machines for Berliner, was his own company with many mechanical patents that he owned, which patents were valuable in the patent pool agreement with Columbia. Thus, Victor and Columbia began making flat records in America, with Gramophone continuing to do so outside America, leaving Edison as the only major player in the making of cylinders, and Emile Berliner, the inventor of flat records, out of the US market. Edison would soon join the flat record market with his diamond discs and their players. Trevor Williams is the bass player and main lyricist for Audience[1] The cult Art Rock band ran from 1969 - 1972. ... 1897 (MDCCCXCVII) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 - August 3, 1929) was an inventor, best known for developing the disc record gramophone (phonograph in American English). ... Berliner Gramophone was an early record label, the first company to produce disc gramophone records (as opposed to the earlier phonograph cylinder records). ... 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday. ... Columbia Records is the oldest continually used brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888. ... The graphophone is an improved version of the phonograph. ... The Victor Talking Machine Company (1901 - 1929) was a United States corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. ... The Victor Talking Machine Company (1901 - 1929) was a United States corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. ... Edison Records was the first record label, pioneering recorded sound and an important player in the early record industry. ...

In February 1908 the company introduced new labels featuring the famous trademark known as "His Master's Voice," generally referred to as HMV, to distinguish them from earlier labels which featured an outline of the Recording Angel trademark. The latter had been designed by Theodore Birnbaum, an executive of the Gramophone Company pressing plant in Hanover, Germany. The Gramophone Company was never known as the HMV or His Master's Voice company. An icon of the company was to become very well known - the picture of a dog listening to an early gramophone painted in England by Francis Barraud. The painting "His Master's Voice" was made in the 1890's with the dog listening to an Edison cylinder dictophone, which was capable of recording as well as playing, but Thomas Edison did not buy the painting. In 1899, Owen bought the painting from the artist, and asked him to paint over the Edison machine with a Gramophone, which he did. Technically, since Gramophones did not record, the new version of the painting makes no sense, as the dog would not have been able to listen to his master's voice (the master being Barraud, and his own Nipper the dog). In 1902, Eldridge Johnson of Victor Talking Machine Company acquired US rights to use it as the Victor trademark, which began appearing on Victor records that year. UK rights to the logo were reserved by Gramophone. Nipper lived from 1884 to 1895 and is buried in England with a celebrated grave marker. 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... His Masters Voice, often abbreviated to HMV, is a famous trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record company. ... The Recording Angel as it appeared on early Gramophone discs. ... Hanover (German: Hannover []), on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany. ... Edison cylinder phonograph ca. ... 1917 Dictaphone advertisement A Dictaphone is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. ... Nipper shown on a 1920s HMV disc record label Nipper was the dog portrayed in the picture His Masters Voice, who was born in 1884 in Bristol, England, and died in September 1895. ... The Victor Talking Machine Company (1901 - 1929) was a United States corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. ...

In March 1931 The Gramophone Company merged with 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. For later history of the company, see EMI. 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ... The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. ... The EMI Group is a major record label, based in Kensington in London, in the United Kingdom. ...

See also

• List of record labels
• EMI