My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

kerryjo0514 · Post by **kerryjo0514** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 12:32 pm

Hello! My grandmother recently passed and I inherited a 1920 Harmograph and wanted to see if anyone could give me some info on it. I has been up in her attic for years and my husband and I dusted it off and got it working again. No new parts, all original, and the original crank still works! I have no interest in selling it, but when I was trying to do some research on it I came up empty. It is not a brand I have heard of before and all I really want is some background on the brand and machine. I’ll include the info I could find here with some pictures, and I’m really excited to learn more about my grandmother’s machine! I hope someone can help or even just point me in the right direction! Thanks!

1920 Harmograph HG3100
Harmograph Talking Machine Co of St Louis
Subsidiary of Shapleigh Hardware Co of St Louis

briankeith · Post by **briankeith** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:36 pm

There's an ad for one on EBay right now - maybe not the same model ??? And they manufactured 78 records too.
Note the same exact fancy "H" on the record label as your phonograph tag - and the same town, St. Louis.

kerryjo0514 · Post by **kerryjo0514** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:47 pm

thats awesome! I'll have to look into the item on ebay, it would be nice to have an ad or two on it. It seems to be the one, my model is a H3100. I have never heard of the company before, it would be nice if it had some info on them too! thanks for the info!

Player-Tone · Post by **Player-Tone** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 12:05 am

Beautiful phonograph!

Being family owned is a plus too; I wish I had a phonograph owned by my grandparents.

leadlike · Post by **leadlike** » Sat Apr 06, 2013 9:15 am

Very nice machine. It will be tough to find much info on this brand, but it basically falls under the category of an off-brand machine. Their were hundreds of machines of this type, and while they aren't very collectible today (maybe a couple hundred or so) yours is a lovely example. Most of these got pretty beat up, so it is nice to see one so clean.

I believe you can rotate the arm to play both lateral and vertical records. A pretty handy feature.

Edisone · Post by **Edisone** » Sun Apr 07, 2013 3:07 am

A Harmograph catalogue

Edisone · Post by **Edisone** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 3:25 pm

It took about 15 tries to get 'BOX" to upload that file, for some reason. I hope it can be downloaded without trouble

My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

Re: My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

Re: My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

Re: My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

Re: My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

Re: My grandmother's harmograph talking machine

Re: My grandmother's harmograph talking machine