Comments by "Neil Forbes" (@neilforbes416) on "Emile Berliner's Fix: Flatten the Cylinder to a Disc" video.

  1. Emile Berliner established the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellshaft(German Gramophone Company) around the mid-to-late 1870s. His initial trademark on single-sided discs was the Aufnahmende Engerl(Recording Angel) embossed on the unrecorded side of the disc. Within a decade he'd travelled to England where he established a British division called The Gramophone Company Of England Ltd. and it was through the British division that Berliner first acquired the painting that was to provide the new trademark, it was of a Jack Russell Terrier listening to "his master's voice" on, initially a cylinder-based phonograph, but on request, the artist painted over the cylinder machine with a disc-playing gramophone, thus the trademark "His Master's Voice" was born. Ownership of the trademark would be held by Berliner but control of the trademark, and licencing its use would be vested in the British division of Berliner's empire. In the 1890s, Berliner travelled to the USA and set up the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey. The new entity would licence the trademark from the British division. This arrangement lasted until the outbreak of WW1. After that war, Berliner lost control of his British and US companies. The Gramophone Company of England assumed TOTAL ownership and control of "Nipper" as the dog was named in the trademark, and Berliner's DGG had to licence the trademark it once owned, a bitter pill to swallow. DGG could only use the HMV trademark in Germany under the translation: "Die Stimme Seines Herrens", for export, they had to create a new brand, Polydor. In the meantime, Victor in the USA was using the HMV trademark, licencing same from The Gramophone Co. in England. Until 1929 when some reps from RCA came sniffing around the Victor plant, looking for somewhere bigger than what they had, so they could build more radios. RCA started as a division of General Electric but soon took on autonomy after getting hold of the Victor plant and brand-name, but that's all they should've got, no more. The HMV trademark licencing should've ended the minute the ink was dry on the deed of sale of the Victor plant and name to RCA and the Dog & Gramophone should not have been seen in America or Canada again until 1955. WW2 came and went, just prior to that war, The Gramophone Company had merged with Columbia Graphophone Company(a surviving remnant of a failed US venture) to form Electric & Musical Industries Ltd.[EMI], the year was 1938. The merger also brought the Parlophone brand into the mix as Columbia had gained this former Dutch-owned trademark as war booty from WW1. After the 2nd war, EMI expanded into Europe, its new German division, Electrola GmbH taking over control of the HMV trademark, leaving DGG having to use Polydor now for domestic as ell as export markets. Berliner himself was spared the ignominy of seeing all this as he was in his grave by then. Siemens bought out DGG. In America a new label, Capitol was launched just after the war, the new entity struggling to find its feet. A decade on and Capitol would become the infant member of the expanding EMI group. Infant, because EMI bought an established label rather than EMI setting the company up from scratch. EMI owned almost 95% of Capitol, the remaining 5-and-a-bit% held by Capitol's founder. It's here that EMI should've brought in the HMV brand, reappearing in the USA to carry the EMI British roster into the American market, particularly in the 1960s: The Beatles, Cliff Richard & The Shadows, Herman's Hermits, Manfred Mann, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas etc., drawn from EMI's HMV, Columbia and Parlophone labels, all together on HMV in the USA instead of scattered around the non-EMI labels like they were.
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  2. Emile Berliner was the founder of Deutsche Grammophon Gesellshaft mbH in Germany. He also established a British division, The Gramophone Company of England Ltd. It was these two companies that, in the years leading up to WW1 shared ownership 50/50 of the Dog & Gramophone, "His Master's Voice" trademark. Berliner also set up the Victor Talking Machine Company in the USA but did so ONLY as an afterthought. Victor held no share whatsoever in the famous HMV trademark and used it ONLY under licence from DGG and The Gramophone Co. of England until 1918, and from 1918 from the British company only, as DGG had lost co-ownership as a result of the war, and could only use the trademark in Germany under licence from its former division. The Gramophone Co. should've put a halt to RCA acquiring the trademark when RCA bought the Victor name and plant in 1929. RCA already had its own trademark but Victor's only self-owned trademark was its own brand-name, the Dog & Gramophone trademark was NOT Victor's to do anything with except surrender the licence and let the trademark revert to its British owner. In 1938 The Gramophone Co. merged with Columbia Graphophone Company, the successful British orphan child of the failed US company of that name, to form Electric & Musical Industries Ltd., bringing together the Dog & Gramophone HMV trademark and Columbia's Magic Notes trademark to become the two flagship labels of EMI, while a third label, Parlophone, a former Dutch-owned label acquired as post-WW1 war booty by either Columbia Graphophone or The Gramophone Co., became the label for novelty acts until 1962 when four Liverpudlian kids were signed to the label....... When EMI bought Capitol in 1955 to make it a subsidiary of EMI(subsidiary = infant child), EMI should've FORCED RCA to relinquish the Dog & Gramophone trademark so it could be used in the USA under its CORRECT name, "His Master's Voice", as well as making Capitol distribute the Parlophone and(in lieu of CBS using the Columbia name), Regal-Zonophone labels as well as any other labels EMI would own in the coming decades, ensuring that ALL EMI's artist & group roster would appear on Capitol-distributed labels instead of getting farmed out to all and sundry non-EMI labels.
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