ABSTRACT
This article has nine sections: 1. The first decade of Victor; 2. The 1910s; 3. The 1920s; 4. RCA and the 1930s; 5. The 1940s; 6. Engineering innovations; 7. Studios; 8. Artists and repertoire; 9. Victor officials. 1. The First Decade of Victor. The fledgling disc industry was in a state of confusion in 1900. Eldridge R. Johnson was a machinist providing Gramophones for Emile Berliner, the first producer of commercial disc records. Johnson began to make records himself in January 1900. He released his first commercial records a few months later, with gold print on black paper labels (Berliner discs had no labels), seven inches in diameter. Those discs bore the label name Improved Gram-O-Phone Record. They sold for $.50. The first recording, listed as number A-1 in Johnson’s matrix log, was a recitation by George Broderick of Eugene Field’s poem “Departure.
