The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

A friend has an Edison Standard (Banner Decal). His lid has a date stamped on the under side. Any ideas why this date would have been stamped here?

The white portion looks like the old "white out" product we used to paint over a typing mistake. The bottle had a little brush about 1/16" wide and you'd cover your mistake and type over it when it dried. Maybe a repair shop marked a machine when they had it in their shop. Jerry Blais

XCaptBill wrote:A friend has an Edison Standard (Banner Decal). His lid has a date stamped on the under side. Any ideas why this date would have been stamped here?

What a great time capsule.
A friend had a Berliner that had a date stamp of Nov 29 1898 and "REPAIRED" on the inside top surface of the case. Very hard to make out. However, rubber stamped just like your friends.

I certainly don't see "white out" on this. I do see some stain removed (scraped) in order to lighten the surface. This is probably done in order to see the date better when it was stamped.

Very cool find.

It might be the lighting or reflections, but that looks like a recent addition to me. It appears the finish was scraped away and then the ink stamp applied. It it were done 100 years ago I would expect some oxidation and fading, similar to what you see by the handle hardware to the right.

What ever was used to make the lighter area, it had flat end, perhaps a screw driver? It does not appear to me to be an applied substance as Jerry suggests.

Certainly a mystery!

I'm pretty certain it would not have been added recently. The machine belongs to the Granddaughter of the original owner. She is the one asking about it.

I too originally thought the finish looked like it had been removed to apply the date. The liquid correction fluid "Whiteout" wasn't invented until the 1950's, but perhaps there was some other type of liquid applied? I could ask her and she should be able to tell if the finish is scraped off.

Based on Wayne's photo, I'm inclined to think the date may have been added during a visit to a shop. This is an early "B" and it has a bracket for a Cygnet crane. Perhaps it was in the shop in 1913 and had the Cygnet horn added at that time?

Bill

XCaptBill wrote:I'm pretty certain it would not have been added recently. The machine belongs to the Granddaughter of the original owner. She is the one asking about it.

I too originally thought the finish looked like it had been removed to apply the date. The liquid correction fluid "Whiteout" wasn't invented until the 1950's, but perhaps there was some other type of liquid applied? I could ask her and she should be able to tell if the finish is scraped off.

Based on Wayne's photo, I'm inclined to think the date may have been added during a visit to a shop. This is an early "B" and it has a bracket for a Cygnet crane. Perhaps it was in the shop in 1913 and had the Cygnet horn added at that time?

Bill

Bill, this would be my best guess also. A repair shop may have wanted to place a date as a form of warranty of their work.Clock repairers will also leave some evidence of a repair time. I have found cards from their shop with a full date written on the reverse along with the type of repair and then placed neatly behind the mech.

Like a nice little time capsule...


Removing some stain to allow the date to be better seen was needed. Because this is the underside of a lid...the rate it would oxidize would be very, very slow. Hence why lids look so clean and new inside.... .

I agree. This could be someone's modern "idea" to add some significance to an otherwise normal phonograph possibly in a stained or damaged area of the veneer or possibly where a previous decal of some sort was removed and did not come off right. I would not take too much stock in it, as I could easily reproduce this myself today with same identical font ink stampings..

)

Tony K.

Edison Collector/Restorer