Berliner Factory, Montreal 1910

[Lenoirstreetguy]

This is the Berliner Gramophone Company's matrix room in Montreal taken in 1910. The machines I think are Berliner Model H Gramophones and by this time they would have been at the end of their lives in the catalogue. Also as you can see they were using horns which were identical to Victor machines. Earlier they had used a different design which looked like something from an Edison cylinder machine, Those little shelves at the back are full of what appear to be record labels. But what I can't figure out is why each of the tone arms of those machines has what seems to be a piece of cloth wrapped around it, just where the soundbox rests.
This peachy image came from the McCord Museum site.
Jim

[OrthoSean]

Maybe just to protect the plating on the tonearm? A wild, but semi-logical guess.

Great picture!

Sean

[Lenoirstreetguy]

Those would probably be some of the matrixes that RCA dumped for scrap when they moved the pressing plant out of Montreal in the late 60's or early 70's, I think. They dumped the recording ledgers earlier than that.
Jim