The Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. (Precursor label to Edison Records)

History

• 1885-06-27: Alexander Graham Bell proposed to Thomas A. Edison a partnership between Volta Laboratory and The Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. Edison refused.
• 1887-05: American Graphophone Company proposed a merger with The Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. to Thomas A. Edison, demonstrating their new graphophone to him at the St. James Hotel in New York City. Charles Sumner Tainter opposed the demonstration, believing it would reawaken Edison's interest in his own phonograph. Edison rejected the merger offer and proved Tainter's fears correct, hiring Dr. Schulze-Berge on May 26, 1887, to begin new research on possible cylinder wax mixtures, and founding the Edison Phonograph Works a year later.
• 1887-10-08: The Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. was reorganized into the Edison Phonograph Company.

Note: This company existed two decades prior to the company's being legally renamed and reorganized into Edison Phonograph Company in October of 1897. However, beginning with cylinder number 1 in January of 1896, the "Edison Records" label was used on commercial releases. Therefore, though this label entry exists to store information relating to those early two decades, all commercially released Edison Records releases should be under the other label, not this one.

Non-commercial Releases

Due to the age of this label, all Edison recordings have entered the public domain. This includes many releases which were experimental, demos, or otherwise never actually commercially released. These should listed here, as there is no release date by which they could be automatically listed here via release events:

• 1888: Thomas Edison - Speaking to Mr. Blaine
• 1888: Georg Friedrich Händel - Israël in Egypt (1888 Handel Festival, Crystal Palace feat. conductor: Sir August Manns)
  • disc 1
  • disc 2
  • disc 3
• 1889-03: Issler's Orchestra - The Fifth Regiment March
• 1890: Lord Alfred Tennyson - The Charge of the Light Brigade