The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Thanks for suppling that important link.

James.

Hi

Thanks for the additional info. Very helpful.

Using Philadelphia City Directories, I was able to establish that this Qualitoy Mfg Co was a rather briefly-existing company, i.e. only 1922-1923.

The Owner/Proprietor on Chestnut Street was Morris Rankin, who was born in Russia (or Kiev at that time) around 1885, and came to the US in 1905. By trade he was a tinsmith and sheet-metal worker, which makes sense from the construction of the Qualitone 'machine.'

How he got access to those two patents (1907 & 1910), I don't know, assuming we can ever ID their full #s. He died in 1971.

An excellent joint effort I must say! This was probably his only foray into the world of phonographs...
can't be too many of these kicking around. I'm sure he was "under-capitalized."

Allen

But it has certain logic, an emigrated tinsmith starting a tin plate clockwork toy factory in the land of opportunities... In Europe, the great toy makers BING also made several portable gramophone models, many of us know the small square box models, the oval ones Bingola I and III... but from the catalogues, their top of the range Bing 333 is truly a professional full size portable gramophone....

Off and on, as search words occurred to me, I tried Google's Advanced Patent Search page -- https://patents.google.com/advanced -- which provides a simple user interface to confine searches to a specific date range, for instance -- 1907-05-01 to 1907-05-30 .

Looking over the Qualitone, about the only unique features I saw were the center-crank flywheel turntable, and the sound box. For the date ranges, I came up with nothing similar. I also searched for other patents involving sound reproduction in general -- talking machines, gramophones, phonographs, sound boxes, reproducers, etc. -- again, nothing.

So, instead of something related specifically to talking machines/phonographs/gramophones, I'm wondering if the patents apply to the tin-making (manufacturing) process, itself, or something related. For instance, just as an example, I found a patent covering the "Process of tinning or coating metal sheets" -- https://patents.google.com/patent/US854 ... n:19070501 which was published 5/21/1907.

OrthoFan