Victor logo with Nipper, the HMV (and later RCA) dog.

Eldridge Reeves Johnson (February 6, 1867 in Wilmington, Delaware^[1] – November 15, 1945 in Moorestown, New Jersey^[2][3]) co-created the Victor Talking Machine Company alongside Emile Berliner, a United States corporation, and built it into the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time.

The company was incorporated in Camden, New Jersey in October 1901 by Johnson. The Victor Talking Machine Company was created by merger and reorganization of two existing companies: Emile Berliner's Berliner Gramophone Company, which produced disc records, and Johnson's Consolidated Talking Machine Company, which produced machines for playing disc records. The company was named "The Victor" in honor of legal victories by Johnson and Berliner over Zonophone and others concerning their rights to patents on and distribution of their products.

On February 26, 1985, Johnson posthumously received the 1984 Grammy Trustee Award, given to persons who made a significant contribution in the field of recording.^[4] This award is on display at the Johnson Victrola Museum located in Dover, Delaware.^[5] Johnson is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Time magazine article from December 20, 1926
• The Marvelous Talking machine - Eldridge R. Johnson
• Johnson Victrola Museum, http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/biocbiop/jf/jf.html
• Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation, University of Pennsylvania
• Biography-West Laurel Hill Cemetery web site