gramophone

Reminds me of my old work in a record store.

Fabulous!!!

Great historic image.

Lovely!

The main competitors in the world record market, The Gramophone Company, and the Columbia Graphophone Company, originally hesitated to enter the Australian market and it took several years before they established record pressing plants in Australia. Whereas the Columbia Graphophone also ran a recording studio from the beginning, the Gramophone Company could not bring itself to operate recording facilities in Australia in order to produce local acts. The Great Depression forced the rivals to amalgamate into EMI also in Australia in 1931. The Gramophone Company The 1898 established British major record company, the Gramophone Company, sent an agent and 25,000 recordings as well as a large number of gramophones to Australia in February 1900 to establish a distribution branch under the direct control of the London parent company. Since the sales figures of the first two years in business did not meet the expectations, the retail business was closed down and sold with the remaining stock to the independent Sydney record retailer Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. in 1905. After World War I, the Australian government enforced a protective economic policy including high tariff barriers and trade restrictions. Thus, when the distribution agreement with Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. expired in 1925, the Gramophone Co. management decided to take the record business again into its own hands and established a gramophone and record plant in Sydney with a capacity of 150,000 records monthly. To cover the whole pacific market two companies were formed. An Australian firm with a production site in Sydney and a distribution branch for New Zealand held by the new Australian company. In mid of 1925, a general manager of the new Australian and New Zealand branches, William Manson, was sent to Sydney and on January 18, 1926, he could ceremonially open the new factory, which immediately started to press the “His Master’s Voice records and the budget ‘Zonophone’ label recordings. The firm’s internal correspondence reveals that the business ran well. The orders could only be met by additional shifts and supplementary shipping from London. Due to a rapidly growing population, the demand for recordings in Australia and New Zealand was far from saturated – in contrast to the stagnating European and U.S. markets. Source: musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-early-...

Ernest Briggs (1905-1967), poet, broadcaster, and critic, was born on 24 January 1905 in Sydney. After his mother's death in 1908, Ernest was raised by his father. A small, frail child with a speech impediment (eventually cured through therapy), he spent much time on lonely bush ramblings; from his father, he gained a love of ballads and song, and of family and colonial history. In 1931 to join station 4BK, Brisbane. He was subsequently a general announcer, continuity manager, program director, feature writer, and publicity officer. Mobilized in the Militia on 6 February 1942, Briggs served as a clerk at New Guinea Force headquarters before being discharged medically unfit on 14 December in Brisbane. He published his first volume of poetry, The Merciless Beauty, in 1943: in it, he reflected on his early personal and mystical experiences which were to lead to his subsequent interest in theosophy, spiritualism, and the religions of the East. His brief term in New Guinea resulted in the powerful, concentrated emotionalism of The Death of the Hare (1949); its title was derived from Yeats. Briggs reverted to his childhood experiences when writing the meditative lyrics in The Secret Listener (1949) and published the third volume of poetry, The Timeless Flowers, in 1952. For his sequences on Yeats, The High Ascent, and Other Poems (1953), he was admitted to the Poetry Society of America. In 1961 and again in 1962 he was awarded the literature diploma of the Leonardo da Vinci Academy, Rome, for his contributions to international culture and understanding. As a music critic, Briggs wrote reviews for the Brisbane Courier-Mail, the Sunday Mail, and the music journal, Canon. He made a notable collection of historical recordings, specializing in vocal art and poetry. Of medium build, with small hands, a high forehead, and frizzy, ginger hair, Briggs had a light baritone voice. Despite a shy, other-worldly outlook, he impressed many people and was known for his spontaneous generosity. Briggs remained a bachelor. He died of myocardial infarction on 21 June 1967 in Brisbane and was cremated with Methodist forms. Source: adb.anu.edu.au/biography/briggs-ernest-9581