Editing Victor Talking Machine Company (section)

=== Name ===
There are different accounts as to how the "Victor" name came about. RCA historian Fred Barnum<ref>{{cite web |title=Preserving the History of RCA Victor |url=http://historiccamdencounty.com/ccnews110.shtml |access-date=10 January 2018 |website=Historiccamdencounty.com}}</ref> gives various possible origins of the name. In ''"His Master's Voice" In America'' he writes, "One story claims that Johnson considered his first improved Gramophone to be both a scientific and business 'victory.' A second account is that Johnson emerged as the 'Victor' in 1901, from the long and costly litigations involving Berliner's gramophone patents and Frank Seaman's [[Zonophone]]. A third story is that Johnson's partner, [[Leon Douglass]], derived the word from his wife's name 'Victoria.' Finally, a fourth story is that Johnson took the name from the popular 'Victor' bicycle, which he had admired for its superior engineering. Of these four accounts, the first two are the most generally accepted."<ref name="HMVIA">Barnum, Fred, "'His Master's Voice' In America", General Electric Co, 1991. {{ISBN|0939766167}}, {{ISBN|978-0939766161}}</ref>  The first use of the Victor name was on a letterhead dated March 28, 1901.<ref>The Talking Machine Review International, Ernie Bayly © 1973 The Gramophone Company Limited</ref>

==== Marketing ====
[[File:Grammofono - Victor IV - Museo scienza e tecnologia Milano.jpg|thumb|Victor IV gramophone. [[Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci]], Milan.]]
Herbert Rose Barraud's deceased brother, a London photographer, willed him his estate, including his DC-powered Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph with a case of cylinders, and his dog, named [[Nipper]]. Barraud's original painting depicts Nipper peering quizzically into the horn of an Edison-Bell phonograph.  Barraud titled the painting "His Master's Voice". The horn on the Edison-Bell machine was black, and after a failed attempt at selling the painting to a cylinder record supplier of Edison Phonographs in the UK, it was suggested to Barraud that the painting might be brightened up (and possibly made more marketable) by substituting one of the brass-belled horns on display in the window at the new gramophone shop on [[Maiden Lane (London)|Maiden Lane]]. The [[Gramophone Company]] in London was founded and managed by an American, William Barry Owen.  One day in 1899, Barraud paid a visit to the shop with a photograph of the painting and asked to borrow a brass horn. Owen lent Barraud a horn and asked him to bring along his painting when he returned it. When Owen was shown the canvas a few days later, he offered to buy it if Barraud would paint out the cylinder machine and substitute a disc Gramophone. Barraud agreed to modify the canvas but he did not completely eradicate all remnants of his original brushwork. On close inspection of the painting, the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph are visible beneath the paint of the gramophone. Emile Berliner acquired a United States copyright for the picture in 1900 and Eldridge Johnson adopted the Nipper/"His Master's Voice"  trademark for use by Consolidated and the following year, for Victor.<ref name="gelatt" />

In 1915, the "His Master's Voice" logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the [[Nipper Building|Victrola cabinet building]] at Victor's headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. The building still stands today with replica windows installed during [[RCA]]'s ownership of the plant in its later years. Today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://historiccamdencounty.com/ccnews158.shtml|title=RCA Nipper Window on Display at Rutgers|website=Historiccamdencounty.com |first1=Hoag |last1=Levins |date=January 2013 |access-date=10 January 2018}}</ref>