Where is Nipper?

[Inigo]

Wow, Mike! Thanks for that info and link! I didn't know that site, it's great!

[soundgen]

Yes it is there is masses of stuff https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/BBC-An ... k-1929.pdf

[soundgen]

It was to do with copyrights actions against the German company from using the original "Nipper" trade mark, so I have been told many years ago. I have several of these records, all from a very short period. I assume that half a trademark was better than nothing!

Although Nipper was used prior to 1910 , the Gramophone was still their trademark , they tried unsuccessfully to retain it as a trademark in 1910 after this Nipper as "His Master's Voice " was their go to ! You could say they were hoovered up

[shoshani]

I was told that the Gramophone Company and Lindstrom group swapped assets at the beginning of WWI to avoid their assets being confiscated as enemy property , so lindstrom got the German gramophone but without the dog ! i can't find any evidence though , but looking through files I had downloaded was this which is interesting about the two groups

I did not realize that Otto Heinemann was part owner of the Lindstrom enterprise; here in the US, he's more or less presented as the group's American agent. Heinemann's General Phonograph did not make entire machines that I know of, but they manufactured motors, soundboxes, and tonearms for sale to builders of machines, as well as several labels of records. Of course, The Gramophone Company's successor EMI eventually did take Lindstrom into their fold, albeit via the merger with Columbia, which had acquired Lindstrom in (I think) 1927.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the American Columbia Phonograph Company - by then no longer affiliated with the British Columbia Graphophone Company - independently acquired the American businesses of Heinemann the previous year. I suppose that technically Victor finally did get that merger, since Sony now owns the corporate descendants of both Victor and Columbia...

[Governor Flyball]

I recall reading the history of the Nipper trademark. The first appearance was Berliner Gramophone in Canada in about 1901. I believe Victor in the US used in from 1902 and the Gramophone Company in the UK from 1909-10. Then Victor expanded to China and Japan around 1920 (?) and used Nipper there. Decades later the Nipper logo throughout the world was geographically divided: North and South America RCA, Europe, most of Asia and Australia EMI, and Japan JVC. In Japan JVC televisions would display Nipper and RCA without! Likewise in England, I would see RCA LPs without Nipper and EMI records with. And recall EMI LPs marketed in the US as "Angel" using the pre-1909 logo!

Back to the Deutche Gramophon issue, during WW1 the Gramophone Company lost control of it's German affiliate from 1914 and the disc was probably issued shortly after the split hence minus Nipper. DG was henceforth a separate entity and the Gramophone Company did re-enter Germany after the war under the Electrola label competing with DG.

That's my summation from memory.