[ Linda Wessels asked in MMD 981018: ]

> How much is a tall red mahogany Columbia victrola worth?
> It has no horn, is this possible?

Maybe, if the horn is inherent in the cabinet.  Open the doors on the
front, give the needle a bit of a brushing with your finger, and listen
for a grumbling from inside the cabinet.  It didn't take phonograph
manufacturers long to learn that huge flower horns (that's what they
were called), cool as they may have looked at the time, didn't fit in
with everyone's idea of home decor.  So they designed a folded-up horn
that fit inside the cabinet of the machine.

> Its nameplate says Columbia Graphophone Co.
> It has no electric motor.

Yup.  Sears sold 'em.  Mostly, they were wind-up jobs.  That's because
most homes didn't have electricity in the early 1900's.  Edison's
electric lamp had been around since 1880 or so, but electric power
was prohibitively expensive until maybe 1910 for most folks and wasn't
widely available before then anyway.  The development of a reliable
constant-speed spring motor made the phonograph a commercial
proposition.

Some early office dictating machines (which were the real reason the
phonograph was invented, anyway) were driven by water turbines.  You'd
hook them up to the sink: one pipe to the faucet and one to the drain,
and turn on the water to make them go.  Spring-wound motors were lots
better.

 [ Jody asked if "Graphophone" is a typo ? ]

Nope.  That's what Columbia called theirs.  My guess is that
"Phonograph" was a trademark owned by Edison and that "Gramophone"
was owned by Berliner.

There are two Columbia Graphophones listed in my trusty 1908 Sears
catalog.  Both were portables with flower horns.  The Oxford Jr. cost
$8.75 and came with 24 cylinder recordings, which you could select from
a list on the next page.  Shades of the Columbia House, no?  The other
machine is the way cool Oxford, with a big black-enameled steel horn.
$14.95, or $16.95 with 24 records.

This latter machine had a strange sort of deal with the records: you
could select your own records from the 150 or so on the Sears list, but
you could also have Columbia select 24 records from their collection of
(get this) "of more than 1,000,000 records."  That's a heck of a record
collection.

You could also buy a disc machine called the Harvard, which doesn't
seem to have the Columbia trademark.  $15.90, stock number 20K5048,
shipping weight 35 pounds.  This one wasn't a Graphophone, but was
instead called The Type F H Harvard Disc Talking Machine, which sounds
like they were being _real_ careful about registered trade names.

I think Sears started marketing phonographs under the Silvertone brand
a few years later.

Mark Kinsler
veteran reader of the Sears Catalog (R.I.P.)