Collections

The earliest commercial sound recordings used Thomas Edison's phonograph technology - wax cylinders. In the late 19th Century, Emil Berliner (1851-1929) developed the gramophone, which employed flat discs instead of cylinders. Cylinders and discs co-existed for a few years, but eventually Berliner's discs won out and became the dominant technology. The discs in this collection represent some of the earliest published disc recordings, and offer a unique insight into the earliest years of music and spoken word recording.

This collection was initially divided into four categories: correspondence, financial papers, stock papers and documents pertaining to the sale of the company to the American Bridge Company. Those four categories have, for the most part, been retained. The bulk of the collection covers the period roughly between 1892 and 1902. The handful of earlier documents, having to do with the Corrugated Metal Company, date back to 1878 and there are also some documents from the period 1903-1905. Some entries in the stock ledger are from 1871.