The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I came across this online book, "The Talking Machine Industry," which I thought might be of interest to some:

http://www.archive.org/details/talkingm ... 00mitcuoft

The book is available in a variety of formats, "flip book," PDF, TXT, etc.

I haven't read it yet, but from what I can tell, it provides an early history of the industry, and contains quite a few illustrations.

After a quick glance, that looks interesting, although the text definitely has some errors.

Perhaps if I get motivated later I’ll clean it up.

Thanks for sharing the link.

The Flip Book (beta) version seems to work pretty well, and allows the user to zoom in on the text:

http://www.us.archive.org/GnuBook/?id=t ... itcuoft#11

Very cool indeed!
Lots of HMV, Columbia & Edison Bell advertising there. There's even a couple ads for the World Record Controller- the first I've ever seen.
Thanks for posting the link.

Thanks David & Shane:

BTW, I just noticed that I can right click on any page to copy and save the image for posting on forums, etc.:


Controller.JPG [ 61.07 KiB | Viewed 768 times ]

(Clicking on the above image will make it appear in its own page for full size viewing.)

The main site for the above book is Open Library -- http://openlibrary.org/ which lists millions of titles, and thousands of books that can be read online.

A quick word search for "Victrola," with "scanned books only" checked, called up two copies of the 1912 edition of the Victor Book of the Opera, and one copy of "Music Appreciation for Children," published by Victor. Clicking on the "Read Online" button gives you the flip book in standard format, while clicking on the book's title takes you to another page with numerous viewing options available by clicking on the "Details" jump on the right side of the page.

The best part of that book is the material..mainly ads...for the World Record controller. I read this book years ago in " rare books" at U of Waterloo, I think, but I have a vague recollection of it being longer. Maybe there was a second edition...or I'm just getting foggy in my dotage!
JIm