Certifiate of Authenticity from an Edison Tone Test

[EarlH]

I bought this oak Chippendale awhile back and when I removed the record slots to clean behind it, this turned up! I've never seen one of these before and it's an interesting bit of history on the machine. My Dad would have turned a year old on September 14th, 1920 so that it kind of a hoot as well. Later on they decided to put one of those Edisonic reproducers on it so they must have been buying records for it up into that era. There was a couple of later Vernon Dalhart records with it. I don't really know if the records have always been with this machine as there was another diamond disc machine on the sale and some records were sold separately. I didn't buy those as they had been somewhere really damp. I figured I'd post this bit before I sold the machine. Edison really worked hard in the late teens and early twenties to promote his machines and it's kind of nice to see that those demonstrations paid off. I met a woman back in the 70's that went to one of those tone tests and she said that is was kind of surprising how good the Edison "held up" when the artist quietly left the stage.

[Jerry B.]

What a fun discovery inside your machine!

Jerry B.