At the start of the 20th century, record players didn’t need electricity, an amplifier or big speakers.
The gramophones, with their big horn, marked a turning point in how the population came to consume music.
“They were the first machines that were reproducing the human voice, the first talking machines at the beginning of the 20th century. That was magic, a machine that was speaking like a human,” says Chris Don, interim director of Montreal’s Emile Berliner Museum.
Berliner, a German inventor, had made his fortune designing the microphone for his friend Alexander Graham Bell’s newly invented telephone.
After moving to Montreal in the late 1800s, Berliner set his sights on his next project: improving the phonograph, which had been invented a few years earlier by Thomas Edison.
The sound-reproducing device used wax cylinders, which were complex to mass-produce.
Berliner, according to Don, figured that pressing the sound on a shellac flat disc was a more straightforward operation that allowed for the mass production of records.
He did it all inside a factory on Lenoir Street at the corner of Saint-Jacques Street in Montreal.
“The technique was born in this building, and the Berliner family here in Montreal invented the mass production of records and the duplication of records by pressing them,” said Don.
The first records took the world by storm as its technology improved exponentially throughout the century.
“Then, they invented the electrical recording that enabled better voice recording that didn’t force the singers to shout in in their microphones or their devices,” said Don.
With it, recording stars made their debut.
“They invited a lot of local artists from Quebec, and they started the production of the real production of the media, what we call today, multimedia,” he said.
The building later became home to the RCA-Victor company, which continued to develop technologies such as transistor radios and early TV sets.
During World War II, the company turned to military communications devices.
The building closed in 1978, and the Emile Berliner Museum opened in 1996.
However, keeping things running is a challenge as the museum is run by volunteers.
To get public funding, the museum needs to meet standards it cannot afford, explains Pierre Valiquette, the museum’s board chairperson.
“To have the accreditation, you need to professionalize,” he said. “It means having employees, at least one, two or three employees, and this is tough.”
The museum relies on donations and special funding for exhibits, such as one focusing on women’s contribution to the recording industry.
A recent spike in rent and the loss of a local grant has forced the museum to lay off its only full-time employee.
The remaining volunteers say they want to make Emile Berliner’s legacy shine as we approach the 125th anniversary of the first commercial record.
