ABSTRACT
The story of Columbia, most recently Sony/CBS Records, is a tangle of similar company names. It seems useful to begin this account with a list of those companies, with abbreviations that will be employed in the article:
AGC-American Graphophone Co. Established 28 Mar 1887 in Washington, D.C. A merger with Columbia Phonograph Co., ca. 1894, left the two firms with separate corporate identities. AGC and CPC combined to form CPCG in May 1894.
