Orthophonic—Western Electric

[MarkELynch]

This may be too esoteric for some collectors here, Here are some interesting royalty figures that Victor paid to Western Electric for the use of their electrical recording process and the Orthophonic horn and soundbox. In the meeting notes Victor referred to the Orthophonic soundbox as the WE soundbox.

Mark

[PeterF]

That’s super interesting! And no small piece of change, either.

[Phono-Phan]

WOW!!!!!

[phonogfp]

It's interesting that the recording royalties increased while the reproducing royalties lessened. Was this due to the slight redesign of the sound box and the appearance of the metal horn (presuming that those were Victor improvements)?

Thanks for posting this, Mark!

George P.

[phonojim]

George , I would guess that the increase in recording royalties vs. the drop in reproducing royalties was due to the fact that while the records could be played on virtually any lateral disc machine, there was a great deal of competition in the machine market by 1927. It is possible that the relatively high cost of Victor's Orthophonic line and the lack of low cost table model machines didn't help either.

I'm not sure about this but it has been my impression that the metal folded horn was developed by HMV.

[MarkELynch]

Thanks for continuing the discussion, I may have underestimated the interest.

The timing of the development of the metal horn in regards to HMV vs Camden could be studied. It was revealed earlier that the metal horn was introduced mainly as a cost reduction over the wooden horns. We discussed this in this previous thread.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=54582&hilit=Horn

As far as royalty, since both the metal and the wooden horns are based on WE patents licensed to Victor I suspect a royalty was paid on both types. Victor did argue in favor of reducing the royalty on the Automatic Victrola 10-50 because even though it contained a WE type horn, more than half of the machine represented Victor developments. More research is needed to see if they were successful in this attempt. I believe the royalty was calculated on the whole machine..

Attached are more entries from the 1927 Meeting Notes. I suspect “Acoustic” refers to the horn royalties.
I also suspect that the “first period” would cover from the beginning in 1925 through 1926.
There were separate royalties compiled and paid on exported products.

Mark

[Damfino59]

HMV being an affiliate of the Victor Talking Machine Co. was able to acquire the rights to the electric recording process. But did not want to pay for the rights to the orthophonic horn. So their #4 models used their own design of tonearm and the #4 sound box. At first these machines used the existing style cabinets modified for the saxophone horn.

It’s not until 1928 does HMV have their re-entrant versions introduced. I wonder if this was because of falling off of acoustic machines in the U.S? This way Western Electric can still get some royalties by charging HMV lower fees.

Anyhow, interesting this view into ancient corporate secrets. : )

[mrrgstuff]

At first these machines used the existing style cabinets modified for the saxophone horn.

Here is a short video showing the HMV saxophone horn, if you haven't seen one before:

https://youtu.be/p59lo5nxMvg

[MarkELynch]

Thanks for posting the information bout the HMV Sax horn, I had not seen one or heard mention of it before.

If anyone would like to continue research or further this discussion about the WE royalties here is a link to the source documents.
Much great information about the inner workings of VTMCo are contained in these volumes.

The sheer output of machines and records is amazing. Let’s see, we’ll make 4500 blue and 3500 brown VV-2-55 portables in July and 16,000 in November…

For the WE royalty discussions please review the 1925 and later volumes.

https://digital.hagley.org/2658

Mark