Finding Aids

For over fifty years the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was one of the country's leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, televisions, and a wide array of consumer and military electronics products. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the Victor Talking Machine Company merged in 1929 becoming the RCA Victor Company in 1930. This merger allowed RCA to consolidate the research, engineering, manufacturing and sales of RCA products. This collection consists of negatives, a majority of which feature sound and television equipment manufactured by RCA. These images include phonographs, radios, radio-phonograph combinations, records, speakers, amplifiers, microphones, facsimile machines, televisions, equipment involved in the transmission and reception of television and radio waves, radio equipment created for use by government agencies and motion picture equipment.

Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was incorporated in 1919, entered the broadcasting field in July 1921 and shortly thereafter began to sell home broadcasting equipment manufactured by GE and Westinghouse. The collection consists of photographs and negatives relating to Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the Victor Talking Machine Company, which was purchased by RCA in 1929, and the RCA-Victor Division of Radio Corporation of America.

The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American phonograph record company. In 1901, Eldridge Johnson (1867-1945) combined his patents with those of Emile Berliner (1851-1929), incorporating the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey and adopting the "His Master's Voice" trademark from Berliner. It increased in success by signing Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) and John Phillip Sousa (1854-1932) among others to recording contracts, by introducing the Victrola with its enclosed horn in 1906, and by improving recording technology. This item is an advertising brochure for Victor Talking Machine Company records.