The Vaping Friar

The histories of this company as well as the history of the invention of gramophone record and gramophone itself are inseparably related to the name of talented inventor, engineer and businessman Emile Berliner. In 1893 Berliner had formed the United States Gramophone Company that located at 1410 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C.. This company offered the first seven inches disc records in November 1894 on the Berliner Gramophone label. After various mergers, divisions, lawsuits, and injunctions, this company was to give rise to the Victor Talking Machine Company. The company was incorporated in Camden, New Jersey on October 3, 1901 by Eldridge R. Johnson.

In England, the Gramophone Company was incorporated in 1899. In the same year the Deutsche Grammophon (DGG) branch of the Gramophone Company was established in Berlin, from which sub-branches were formed in Russia and Austria. In a few years the joint-stock company "Gramophone" incorporated multiple plants in 30 countries.

For processing records for Russian market a new plant was built in Riga. Officially, the "Gramophone" society acquired manufacturing permission in April,2 1903. In the same year of 1903, the "Gramophone" took over the second factory in Riga from its competitor International Zonophone Company.
For a long time the records were just single-sided. Since January 1, 1911 they start to sell also two-sided records.

Military operations of 1914 had forced company to relocate the manufacture from Riga to Moscow where on the Stshipok Street the Writing Amour (Pishushij Amour) plant had been established.

In the beginning of 1918 the Moscow factory was stopped. All its equipment had been moved to the "Fifth Anniversary of October" factory (former Brothers Pathe factory).