Victor Talking Machine - World's Largest Orthophonic?

[gregbogantz]

Sorry I didn't see your posting earlier, frenchmarky. Victor did, indeed, first use the term "electrola" to denote some early victrolas with electric motors in the teens. But when the electronic players made their debut in the mid 1920s, Victor resurrected the term and applied it to all their electronic players. This can readily be seen in all of their advertising of this period. By the late 1920s and into the early 1930s after RCA had purchased Victor, the terminology continued in the product model numbering. The radio models were marked with an "R". Electrolas were marked with an "E", and automatic record changers were denoted by an "A" in the model numbers. For example, the R-32 was a radio in the 1929 model year. The RE-45 was a radio/electronic phono combination, also in 1929. And the RAE-84 was a radio/electronic phono with record changer in 1932.