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Recently I have been going through my collection of nearly ten thousand cylinders of which about five thousand are Edison Blue Amberols. With all of these cylinders and in all of these years of collecting I have never noticed a Blue Amberol cylinder title misspelling until just today. The cylinder is #5105 and the title should read: "THE PRISONER'S SONG - WALTZ KAPLAN'S MELODISTS". However, mine clearly reads: "THE PRISCNER'S SONG - WALTZ KAPLAN'S MELODISTS". At first I thought it was simply a poorly struck capital "O" but it is indeed a capital "C". I know because I examined the title carefully under high magnification. It is indeed a "C" and not an "O". If anyone else owns this particular Edison Blue Amberol cylinder I would be curious if yours also indicates this spelling error. I find it fascinating to see errors in labels and titles as well as listening to recording errors so I will add this one to others I have found in my collection.

Doug

10,000 cylinders?! Well, you certainly have me beat. My copy of that song is spelled correctly. I'm guessing the mistake happened on one sub-master of a particular take. I don't recall ever seeing an Edison cylinder spelled wrong.

The most common labelling problems that I have seen are wrong labels on American Pathé disks. Maybe the employees were drinking during lunch hour!

VintageTechnologies wrote: Maybe the employees were drinking during lunch hour!

You say that as if it was a bad thing.

Andreas

Doug,

The "c" is indeed intriguing. I compared it to the "c"s on several of my Blue Amberols: some "c"s were like the one depicted above while others had a larger opening. This could very well be a typo; it could also have been due to a defective stamper.

It's obvious that Edison didn't run a "spell check"!


Rocky

This is uncommon, but not unheard of. I have two examples myself but a different title than yours. Both of my examples are of 3707 – The Right of The People to Rule, by Roosevelt; however, Roosevelt’s’ name is engraved Rooselet.

Both of mine are also of the same Take and Mold, Take One, Mold 13, which might be a clue.

I spoke with Ron Dethlefson several years ago about this and he was puzzled as well. Ron indicated that the engraving process was a painstaking process, by hand, to get everything perfect. He further indicated that batches of cylinders would run down the production line and about every 100th cylinder was pulled for inspection. So, it seems likely that only about 100 of your particular Take and Mold, as well as mine, made it through the production run.

This is only a guess however and it is strange that I managed to find two of the same take and mold that were identical.

EdisonSquirrel wrote:It's obvious that Edison didn't run a "spell check"!

Thanks for your comments, Rocky. I have quite a few Blue Amberols that have weak stamping within which are some letters that look like another letter. This example I have is stamped deeply. I'm confident it was a mistake.

rodpickett wrote: I have two examples myself but a different title than yours. Both of my examples are of 3707 – The Right of The People to Rule, by Roosevelt; however, Roosevelt’s’ name is engraved Rooselet.

Thanks for your comments, Rod. That is very interesting indeed! Is there any chance you would post a picture of your Roosevelt cylinder with the misspelled name? I would really appreciate seeing it.

Doug

I pulled the cylinder and took a photo. Actually, the letters V and E are missing. Very strange.

rodpickett wrote:I pulled the cylinder and took a photo. Actually, the letters V and E are missing. Very strange.

Thanks Rod. That is simply amazing to me! It looks almost as though the person setting the title for this cylinder realized (too late!) that there was insufficient space left before the "Thomas A. Edison" logo. So they decided instead of cramming in the complete last name of "ROOSEVELT" they thought "Hmmm...what would look OK and still fit...ahhhh, there we are, "ROOSELT"...no one will notice." I really enjoy seeing these early anomalies! Thanks again for sharing this.

Doug

I have a copy of Will Oakland's"Silver Threads Among The Gold"that says"SILER Threads Among The Gold"in the title! edisonplayer

I remember now about the Will Oakland BA of "Silver Threads".The title read "SIVER" edisonplayer