Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1931-12)

42 The Phonograph Monthly Review Along The Memory Trail By FRANK DORIAN Assistant to the President, Columbia Phonograph Company, Inc. ’'Some of us who are younger than Edison have no difficulty in remembering when his inventions—or his betterments of the others’ inventions— were novelties. It seems to us that there were few houses that we frequented in our boyhood that were equipped with incandescent lights. And the phonograph was a great nickel-in-the-slot novelty in the World’s Fair era—we can still hear the announcement about the 'Co-lumbia Phonograph Company of N’Yawk and-a Paris’ prefacing a playing of ’Manhattan Beach’, as played by Sousa’s United States Marine Band.” (Franklin P. Adams—'"F.P.A.” in New York Herald-Tribune, October 20, 1931.) I LIKE F. P. A.’s whimsical humor im- mensely and reading his column, “The Conning Tower,” in each morning’s Herald- Tribune, is one of my daily enjoyments. But the faults and delusions of memory are aptly illustrated in his paragraph quoted above. While the nickel-in-the-slot phonograph was not exactly a novelty “in the World’s Fair era” (1893), it had at that time attained great popularity as a form of public enter- tainment, and it remained popular for ten years or more thereafter. So it is not sur- prising that F. P. A.’s memory associates it most vividly with the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. F. P. A.’s memory plays a mean trick on him, however, when he associates the an- nouncement about the “Co-lumbia Phono- graph Company of N’Yawk and-a Paris” with the World’s Fair era. What he heard then, and the only way he could have avoided hearing it was by holding the hearing tubes away from his ears at the beginning of the reproduction—was about the “Co-lumbia Phonograph Company of Washington, Dee See.” Because in 1893 the headquarters and recording laboratories of Columbia were still in Washington. It was not until January 1st, 1897, that Columbia moved its head offices and studios to New York and the announce- ment then was changed to “Columbia Phono- graph Company of New York.” In August, 1897, I sailed for Paris to es- tablish Columbia’s first European branch. Many weeks were spent in finding suitable premises, negotiating and executing a lease— (and a French lease is a formidable docu- ment requiring much time and legal advice for preparation, rag-chewing, and execution) —and in equipping the premises and getting everything just so for the grand opening. So that it was the early part of November, 1897, as nearly as my memory serves, before our first branch in Europe was opened at 34 Boulevard des Italiens, Paris. Consequently the announcement on Columbia records was not changed to “New York and Paris” until the later part of 1897 or the early part of 1898. I hope you notice that I said “as nearly as my memory serves.” I believe I have an average good memory, but looking back over a period of more than forty years during which I made few if any written memoranda of daily events, it is a little difficult—almost impossible—to be sure that memory is not playing tricks with me. If we had realized in the early days of the industry that we were making history, we should probably have been more careful to jot down from day to day the things that would be worth re- membering accurately, to separate truth from legend. So whenever I am asked to tell something of the early days of the phono- graph industry, I realize how difficult it is to separate facts from traditions and I try not to trust memory too far. Strange as it may seem, I do not recall the precise date of opening of our Paris branch in spite of the fact that it was an epochal event in Columbia history as well as in my own life. I have a record of it somewhere, of course, but it is not available at the moment, so memory must serve for the time being. The recent and universally regretted death of Thomas A. Edison has set loose a flood of stories about his life, his inventions, his early experiences and his outstanding achieve- ments. Many of them are purely legendary, or based on memory that is as likely to be faulty as it is to be accurate, as in the case of F. P. A.’s paragraph quoted above. The one undeni- able and unfortunate fact is that a truly great man has passed away. The details of his life and achievements will lead to endless argument and much controversy; but his fame will endure. F. P. A.’s reference to the nickel-in-the- slot phonograph set my mind to running down a trail of long-past years in which the nickel-in-the-slot phonograph and the part it played in the development of the talking machine industry struck me as likely to be of interest to many present day phonograph record enthusiasts. First of all, however, let’s drop that mouth-filling term, “nickel-in-the-slot” and shorten it to “coin-slot”; not only for the sake of brevity, but for reasons which will be apparent later on. The coin-slot phonograph made its bow to