The Edison phonograph monthly (Jan-Dec 1916)

12 EDISON PHONOGRAPH MONTHLY, JUNE, 1916 AMBEROLA AND THE FINE ARTS VOICE reproduction is one of the modern high arts and the Amberola is one of the high achievements of this art. It is well to emphasize the dignity of voice reproduction and its standing among the arts as far as possible in your window displays. When exhibiting the Amberola always place it in as artistic as possible a setting. If you are the proprietor of a music store, display your Amberolas in connection with your finest pianos and your most valuable violins. Don't place an Amberola in a window in which you are showing mouth-harps or accordions. If you sell Amberolas through your art store, place some of the most beautiful and classical of your pictures in a window in which you show the Amberola. If you are in charge of the display windows of a department store, you have more latitude than most exhibitors and it will not be difficult for you always to provide artistic and dignified settings for your Amberola displays. If you have no means of giving the Amberola a setting that an instrument representing one of the greatest of modern arts should have, place it alone in a window without making any attempt to heighten the effect that might be secured by introducing an elaborate setting. Never display cheap or unharmonious merchandise in connection with the Amberola. Always strive to emphasize the fact that the Amberola is not a mere talking machine but that it is a noble instrument of music that should be accorded the reverence that is its due. PHONOGRAPH LED NEW EDISON EXECUTIVE TO ADOPT HIS VOCATION GE. FAIRBANKS, former works manager . for the Gilbert & Barker Manufacturing Company, Springfield, Mass., on May 1 succeeded H. T. Leeming as works manager of the Edison Phonograph Works. Mr. Fairbanks is a manufacturing executive of wide experience and acquaintance, and in Springfield was president of the Executives' Club, vice-president of the Area Club, and was prominent in other organizations of the city in which he lived. An interesting fact in connection with his career was brought out in a recent interview in which he stated that he was first inspired to adopt his life's work by the achievement of Mr. Edison in inventing the phonograph. When he heard the phonograph for the first time the wonder of the invention and the possibility of achievement that it expressed made him resolve to "make things," a resolution that he steadfastly has held to and that has brought him the success he has attained. "My coming to the Edison Phonograph Works is somewhat accidental in itself," said Mr. Fairbanks. "Yet, when I pause to think that I am now connected with the Edison enterprises, my mind seems to go back to a winter's night some thirtyone years ago. At that time I was living on a farm and had heard the talk of my elders in regard to the wonderful phonograph that had just been invented by Mr. Edison. There was some division of opinion as to whether it was newspaper talk or whether the machine would do what was claimed for it, namely, reproduce sound. The opportunity to verify the statements that had been circulated regarding the instrument came when an exhibitor brought one of the machines to a nearby town. I went on horseback to hear it and paid fifty cents for the privilege. And then, so impressed was I with it, that I stayed after the crowd had left and helped to pack it up so that I might get a near view of it. "Boy as I was, I was firmly convinced that the inventor of the machine could not be an ordinary man. In my opinion he was a super-man, one who was not of the earth earthy, but one who belonged above the clouds. And I was intensely interested in the mechanism of the machine and viewed with wonder the various parts that a genius had fashioned and put together in order to give a machine a soul. The wonder of it all seemed to inspire me and that night I determined to 'make things.' And now, thirty-one years afterward, I find myself in this bee-hive of 'making things,' under the leadership of this super-man who gave a soul to a machine. Others may have chained the lightning and made steam and other forces our obedient servants, but only a super-man could devise a means for catching and preserving forever that intangible individualistic expression of the soul — the human voice. And to-day the phonograph is so much more wonderful than it was thirty-one years ago. Now it has not only a soul, but an educated one. It is easy to catch the spirit that prevails here and our slogan will be 'Quality First.'" PHONOGRAPHIC ODDS AND ENDS It was just twenty-one years ago that the first phonograph was introduced into Havana. An Edison instrument was taken to the city at that time by a man named George Yull, who opened an exhibit in the rear of Central Park in the Cuban city and charged people twenty cents to hear two selections. The amusement venture was a great success until the phonograph gradually became an article of commerce. Emperor Franz Josef of Austria recently recorded his opinions of the European war on a series of phonograph records. The contents of the records will not be made public until after the death of the ruler. The hours, halves and quarters are spoken by an English clock which has a phonograph with a very durable record as a part of its mechanism.