Recorded August 13, 1912
In the 1890s, Eldridge Reeves Johnson owned a small machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, when a customer brought in a Berliner phonograph. Unlike Edison talking machines, Berliner Gramophone Company used disc records instead of cylinders. The sound quality was bad and Johnson spent the next 6 years improving the sound and volume capacity. In 1901 Johnson’s Consolidated Talking Machine Company merged with Berliner’s Berliner Gramophone Company to form the Victor Talking Machine Company.
Barraud sold it to Berliner as a trademark and modified it to show one of their disc machines. Barraud painted over the Edison machine and added a new Berliner brass sound horn. The new image was called “His Master’s Voice.”
Victor recording studios used Victor staff conductor Walter B Rogers directing Victor’s own “house” orchestras, the Victor Orchestra for popular works and the Victor Concert Orchestra for “classical” music starting in 1907.
On August 13, 1912 the Victor Concert Orchestra was in the Victor Recording studios in Camden, New Jersey to record MARCHE ROMAINE by Charles Gounoud.
Thanks to the incredible collection at University of California Santa Barbara Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings :http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/index.php