URGENT: ?Victrola ?victrola
Fred Louder
word "victrola" lowercased. Even in the days when "Victrola" had the status
of a generic term for phonograph, wasn't it generally capitalized? I seem to
recall that lowercase was sometimes used, but I don't think it ever became
standard, as it did for "gramophone."
I'm sorry to say I get no guidance from Webster's Collegiate, which has
"gramophone" but not "Victrola/victrola"!
Thanks,
Fred Louder
PS--I've also queried Tim Gracyk, who seems to have the web site on
Victrolas and early recordings. His site includes some very interesting
articles on the early history of recorded music. See
http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/
John O'Flaherty
Robert Bryan Lipton
Fred Louder wrote in message ...
>Bucking a deadline on another editing job, I have just discovered the
>word "victrola" lowercased. Even in the days when "Victrola" had the status
>of a generic term for phonograph, wasn't it generally capitalized? I seem
to
>recall that lowercase was sometimes used, but I don't think it ever became
>standard, as it did for "gramophone."
>
>I'm sorry to say I get no guidance from Webster's Collegiate, which has
>"gramophone" but not "Victrola/victrola"!
>
>Thanks,
>
>Fred Louder
>
>PS--I've also queried Tim Gracyk, who seems to have the web site on
>Victrolas and early recordings. His site includes some very interesting
>articles on the early history of recorded music. See
>http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/
I would assume that no one really cares about the Victor Company anymore and
their trademark for the Victrola has, doubtless, not been energetically
defended for many years, even if RHUD2 lists it as a trademark.
Bob
Brian J Goggin
<flo...@pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Bucking a deadline on another editing job, I have just discovered the
>word "victrola" lowercased. Even in the days when "Victrola" had the status
>of a generic term for phonograph, wasn't it generally capitalized? I seem to
>recall that lowercase was sometimes used, but I don't think it ever became
>standard, as it did for "gramophone."
>
>I'm sorry to say I get no guidance from Webster's Collegiate, which has
>"gramophone" but not "Victrola/victrola"!
[...]
===OED begins=====
Victrola (__________). Also victrola.
[f. the name of the Victor Talking Machine Co. + -ola.]
The proprietary name of a kind of gramophone.
1905 E. Johnson Let. 9 June in Amer. Speech (1961) XXXVI. 116 The word
Victrola is similar to nothing I have ever heard of and seems to me to
have a sound suggestive of music, and would in all probability be the
best word to use.
1906 Official Gaz. (U.S. Patent Office) 9 Jan. 644/2 Victor Talking
Machine Company._ Filed Dec. 1, 1905. Victrola.
1906 Trade Marks Jrnl. 9 May 628 Victrola 279,292. Philosophical
instruments, scientific instruments, and apparatus for useful
purposes.
1916 _J. Webster' Dear Enemy 318 The children_had a lot of new records
for the victrola.
1937 N. Coward Present Indicative vi. 259 A tall Renaissance chair
with a red velvet cushion under which lived an electric victrola.
1952 J. Steinbeck East of Eden 374 He bought a Victor victrola_and he
went regularly to see what new records had come in.
1979 P. Theroux Old Patagonian Express xvii. 259, I found an old
phonograph. It was literally a Victrola, a 1904 Victor.
===ends=====
bjg [post & mail]
Earle Jones
-- I would guess about 1900.
VTMC later merged into the Radio Corporation of America, thus the RCA Victrola.
RCA was established by the US Government as a commercial holding company,
specifically to hold patents on German technology after WW I. Selected as
the first President of RCA was the young David Sarnoff -- selected because
he was a national hero, having maintained telegraph communications with the
sinking Titanic in 1912. His telegraph room was on the top floor of
Wanamaker's Department Store in New York City.
No mention in the movie, however.
Today RCA is but a trademark for audio/video stuff manufactured by
Matsushita Corp.
RCA Labs in Princeton became the David Sarnoff Research Center and is now
wholly owned by SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) of
Menlo Park, California.
Aren't you glad you asked?
earle
--
In article <b7Ni2.896$ht2...@news20.bellglobal.com>, "Fred Louder"
<flo...@pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Bucking a deadline on another editing job, I have just discovered the
>word "victrola" lowercased. Even in the days when "Victrola" had the status
>of a generic term for phonograph, wasn't it generally capitalized? I seem to
>recall that lowercase was sometimes used, but I don't think it ever became
>standard, as it did for "gramophone."
>
>I'm sorry to say I get no guidance from Webster's Collegiate, which has
>"gramophone" but not "Victrola/victrola"!
>
>Thanks,
>
>Fred Louder
>
>PS--I've also queried Tim Gracyk, who seems to have the web site on
>Victrolas and early recordings. His site includes some very interesting
>articles on the early history of recorded music. See
>http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/
__
__/\_\
/\_\/_/
\/_/\_\ earle
\/_/ jones
We want our Internet back! Get rid of Spam.
See http://www.cauce.org
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> Holiday greetings from Mimi & Dick --
Shove 'em, Moron & Prick.
And a Black Year (shvarts yor) on both of you suck-up phonies.
===========================
Visit Dr. Aman's Gallery of Net Geeks
===========================
Obese MeMe "The Whale" Kahn:
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/meme-kahn.jpg
Young MeMe Kahn. Now, 50 years later, she looks worse:
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/meme-young.jpg
MeMe Kahn now. Her scary, hideous face can't be shown:
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/meme-now.jpg
--
Dr. Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Editor & Publisher, MALEDICTA
Santa Rosa, CA 95402, USA
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> How dare you deposit your rubbish on a serious thread!? Get off this
> newsgroup and stay off.
Freddie, Freddie, when will you learn that *nobody* and *nothing* in AUE
is sacrosanct, including this "serious" thread about your editorial and
spelling tribulations.
> Reinhold (Rey) Aman wrote in message <368C52...@sonic.net>
> >MeMe "SOS" Kahn wrote:
> >> Holiday greetings from Mimi & Dick --
> >Shove 'em, Moron & Prick.
> >And a Black Year (shvarts yor) on both of you suck-up phonies.
--
Fred Louder
newsgroup and stay off.
FL
Reinhold (Rey) Aman wrote in message <368C52...@sonic.net>...
>MeMe "SOS" Kahn wrote:
>
>> Holiday greetings from Mimi & Dick --
>
>Shove 'em, Moron & Prick.
>And a Black Year (shvarts yor) on both of you suck-up phonies.
>
>===========================
>Visit Dr. Aman's Gallery of Net Geeks
>===========================
>Obese MeMe "The Whale" Kahn:
>http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/meme-kahn.jpg
>
>Young MeMe Kahn. Now, 50 years later, she looks worse:
>http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/meme-young.jpg
>
>MeMe Kahn now. Her scary, hideous face can't be shown:
>http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/meme-now.jpg
>
>--
>Dr. Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Fred Louder
>On Thu, 31 Dec 1998 11:54:55 -0400, "Fred Louder"
><flo...@pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>Bucking a deadline on another editing job, I have just discovered the
>>word "victrola" lowercased. Even in the days when "Victrola" had the
status
>>of a generic term for phonograph, wasn't it generally capitalized? I seem
to
>>recall that lowercase was sometimes used, but I don't think it ever became
>>standard, as it did for "gramophone."
>>
>>I'm sorry to say I get no guidance from Webster's Collegiate, which has
>>"gramophone" but not "Victrola/victrola"!
>
>
>===OED begins=====
>
>Victrola (__________). Also victrola.
>[f. the name of the Victor Talking Machine Co. + -ola.]
>The proprietary name of a kind of gramophone.
>1905 E. Johnson Let. 9 June in Amer. Speech (1961) XXXVI. 116 The word
>Victrola is similar to nothing I have ever heard of and seems to me to
>have a sound suggestive of music, and would in all probability be the
>best word to use.
>1906 Official Gaz. (U.S. Patent Office) 9 Jan. 644/2 Victor Talking
>Machine Company._ Filed Dec. 1, 1905. Victrola.
>1906 Trade Marks Jrnl. 9 May 628 Victrola 279,292. Philosophical
>instruments, scientific instruments, and apparatus for useful
>purposes.
>1916 _J. Webster' Dear Enemy 318 The children_had a lot of new records
>for the victrola.
>1937 N. Coward Present Indicative vi. 259 A tall Renaissance chair
>with a red velvet cushion under which lived an electric victrola.
>1952 J. Steinbeck East of Eden 374 He bought a Victor victrola_and he
>went regularly to see what new records had come in.
>1979 P. Theroux Old Patagonian Express xvii. 259, I found an old
>phonograph. It was literally a Victrola, a 1904 Victor.
>
>===ends=====
That's the stuff to keep the table turning. Some readers might consider two
of the OED citations for lowercase authoritative: one as coming from a great
show business figure, the other as the usage of a Nobel laureate. Both, I
think, can be explained away. Noel Coward's usage merely reflects an
Englishman's assumption that the Victrola is an American gramophone. As for
the Steinbeck citation, it loses authority on the grounds that it's
paradoxical. Clearly it shows that the word Victrola had become generic; but
as it was a Victor Victrola, it ought to have been capitalized; lowercasing
might have been appropriate if it were some competing competing brand, say a
Brunswick victrola or a Pathé victrola (I'm improvising, here--not sure
which companies made the external-horn type machines). On the
Kleenex/kleenex analogy: if I buy Kleenex, you may be pretty sure I bought
the Proctor & Gamble tissue; but if I buy kleenex, it might be Scott or
Majesta or Co-op or any one of a hundred competing brands. Finally we see
that Paul Theroux makes this distinction quite explicit.
Now what about "gramophone"? COD says it was "formed by the inversion of
phonogram"; Webster's Collegiate says it comes from Gramophone, originally a
trademark. However, Victrola authority Tim Gracyk, who has published a list
of 263 early record-player brands, says it was *not* a company name; yet I
could swear there was a firm named British Gramophone Co., or something very
like.
All the best for Old 99,
Fred Louder
M.J.Powell
Earle Jones <ejon...@concentric.net> writes
>Capital "V" Victrola -- a trade mark of the Victor Talking Machine Company
>-- I would guess about 1900.
>
>VTMC later merged into the Radio Corporation of America, thus the RCA Victrola.
>
>RCA was established by the US Government as a commercial holding company,
>specifically to hold patents on German technology after WW I. Selected as
>the first President of RCA was the young David Sarnoff -- selected because
>he was a national hero, having maintained telegraph communications with the
>sinking Titanic in 1912. His telegraph room was on the top floor of
>Wanamaker's Department Store in New York City.
I thought the Titanic was in contact with Cape Race until it went down?
Mike
Brian J Goggin
<flo...@pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
[...]
>Now what about "gramophone"? COD says it was "formed by the inversion of
>phonogram"; Webster's Collegiate says it comes from Gramophone, originally a
>trademark. However, Victrola authority Tim Gracyk, who has published a list
>of 263 early record-player brands, says it was *not* a company name; yet I
>could swear there was a firm named British Gramophone Co., or something very
>like.
===begins=====
gramophone (__________), n. Also grammophone.
[app. formed by inversion of phonogram. The spelling grammo- (not the
inventor's) is an attempt to make the word look more like a correct
formation.]
1. An instrument for the reproduction of recorded sound, similar in
principle to the phonograph but using, instead of a drum, a flat disc
containing a spiral groove; a stylus is allowed to rest in the groove
as the disc is rotated on a turntable, and the vibrations communicated
to the stylus by the iregularities in the groove are transformed into
sound vibrations. (In the U.S., phonograph is the generic name for
such an instrument.) In its modern form, with an electric motor,
electronic amplification, and one or more loud-speakers, it is now
more commonly termed a _record-player'.
The earliest gramophones were also used to cut records, using blank
discs.
1887 Pat. Off. Gaz. 8 Nov. 620/2 Gramophone [patented by] Emile
Berliner, Washington, D.C.
1888 Times 13 Jan. 12/3 His [Edison's] original phonograph has
received important modifications_ in_Mr. Berliner's grammophone.
1896 Critic 21 Nov. 322/2 A man who uses a gramophone_talks into his
machine, and hands the records over to his typewriter, who reads them
off on her gramophone, and writes them out on the typewriter.
1899 E. Wharton Greater Inclination 59 Her voice_was like a voice
reproduced by a gramophone: the real woman seemed far away.
1906 Daily Chron. 26 Nov. 4/7 What's wearing me to skin and bone? My
neighbour's grinding gramophone.
1913 B. Clements-Henry Gramophones & Phonographs 5 The disc machine is
known as the _gramophone', and the cylinder machine as the
_phonograph'.
1917 A. Waugh Loom of Youth ii. i. 89 Every night closed with a feed
in Mansell's big study, while the gramophone strummed out rag-time
choruses.
1921 P. A. Scholes Learning to Listen p. xv, The accumulated results
of their already large experience of the educational use of the
Gramophone.
1922 O. Mitchell Talking Machine Industry iv. 31 The gramophone, or
disc machine, has_practically ousted the older invention from the
English market.
1923 T. S. Eliot Waste Land iii. 256 She smoothes her hair with
automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.
1928 Galsworthy Swan Song ii. iv. 140 _What is the most pitiable sight
in the world?'_ _Oh! I think---a rich man listening to a bad
gramophone.'
1952 Godfrey & Amos Sound Recording & Reproduction i. 33 The chief
advantage of the gramophone over the phonograph as claimed by Berliner
was this comparatively simple method of producing copies.
1955 Times 3 May 6/2, 10s. notes were found stuffed in the horn of a
gramophone in his bedroom.
1967 Times Rev. Industry Mar. 41/3 The Gramophone Co. was refused the
right to the trade mark _Gramophone' in 1910.
1971 Daily Tel. 4 Nov. 12/4 Antoine speaks posthumously to the
back_biting assembly through the horn of a 1913 gramophone.
===ends=====
bjg
George F. Hardy
letter. Xerox is an example. Xerox is a trademark and
should be spelled as Xerox every time. But, if you mean
a photocopy, then you may spell Xerox as xerox, common but
incorrect.
GFH
Mark S. Brader
> > selected because he was a national hero, having maintained telegraph
> > communications with the sinking Titanic in 1912. His telegraph room
> > was on the top floor of Wanamaker's Department Store in New York City.
The Titanic sank on a Sunday night -- Wanamaker's was closed.
> I thought the Titanic was in contact with Cape Race until it went down?
Right. Sarnoff's actual role was that he was one of those who received
the messages sent by the rescue ship Carpathia after the sinking. He
subsequently exaggerated his importance for self-promotional purposes,
but this is the first time I've seen it taken as far as "national hero".
I think Sarnoff was only the general manager of RCA at first, becoming
president a few years later, but I can't find the book where I've read
about this and I could be misremembering in this respect.
--
Mark Brader | "The world little knows or cares the storm through
Toronto | which you have had to pass. It asks only if you
msbr...@interlog.com | brought the ship safely to port." --Joseph Conrad
My text in this article is in the public domain.
geoff butler
>How dare you deposit your rubbish on a serious thread!? Get off this
>newsgroup and stay off.
Fine, but please don't cite his postings, especially verbatim. Those of
us here who prefer not to read a word he writes prefer not to read a
word he writes.
-ler
Earle Jones
Brader) wrote:
>> > Selected as the first President of RCA was the young David Sarnoff --
>> > selected because he was a national hero, having maintained telegraph
>> > communications with the sinking Titanic in 1912. His telegraph room
>> > was on the top floor of Wanamaker's Department Store in New York City.
>
>The Titanic sank on a Sunday night -- Wanamaker's was closed.
>
>> I thought the Titanic was in contact with Cape Race until it went down?
>
>Right. Sarnoff's actual role was that he was one of those who received
>the messages sent by the rescue ship Carpathia after the sinking. He
>subsequently exaggerated his importance for self-promotional purposes,
>but this is the first time I've seen it taken as far as "national hero".
>
>I think Sarnoff was only the general manager of RCA at first, becoming
>president a few years later, but I can't find the book where I've read
>about this and I could be misremembering in this respect.
--
Mark: The above posting was mine -- I should note that I was going from
memory; I haven't checked the references lately. I'll see whether I can
find a reference and let you know.
Sarnoff was certainly not above a certain amount of self promotion. And I
suspect he was picked to head up RCA owing to his neutral position relative
to the major commercial interests at the time. I don't think he was a
"national hero" (although that's what I said in my original posting!)
I worked at SRI International for years and came to know many of the
Sarnoff Research Center people.
The downfall of RCA, in my opinion, came with the death of Sarnoff. The
reins were turned over to his son, Bobby, who was more of a playboy than a
manager.
regards,
earle
--
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>Sarnoff was certainly not above a certain amount of self promotion. And I
>suspect he was picked to head up RCA owing to his neutral position relative
>to the major commercial interests at the time. I don't think he was a
>"national hero" (although that's what I said in my original posting!)
>
>I worked at SRI International for years and came to know many of the
>Sarnoff Research Center people.
>
>The downfall of RCA, in my opinion, came with the death of Sarnoff. The
>reins were turned over to his son, Bobby, who was more of a playboy than a
>manager.
Sarnoff was indeed not above self-promotion and at the expense of
other more talented people. He actively and successfully suppressed FM
radio in favour of RCA's adopted AM radio even though he must have
known that FM was the superior system. I believe it's true that
Armstrong, the inventor of FM, eventually committed suicide over his
frustration with the pig-headed Sarnoff.
Charles