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Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company (1901–1929) was an American corporation, the
leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading
phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New
Jersey. The company was founded by Eldridge R. Johnson, who had previously made
phonographs to play Emile Berliner's Berliner Gramophone records. Some sources
also claim Berliner as a co-founder; others say Berliner was never connected with
the Victor company, though that may have been part of a ruse by Johnson to defeat
the Zonophone lawsuits that had put Berliner Gramophone out of business (in the
U.S., but not in Canada, the UK, or Germany) and threatened Johnson's phonograph
business. (Zonophone had used patent ruses to defeat Berliner, the inventor of disc
records, whose technology Zonophone had copied.) In any event, Victor ultimately
acquired the remaining assets of Berliner Gramophone; it also acquired Zonophone
after defeating it in court.