Newtown Historical Society Faces Mr Edison’s Music

Thomas Edison is the epitome of American inventiveness. Mr Edison held more than 1,000 patents in the course of his career, but one of his favorites remained the phonograph.

Mr Edison had great faith in the phonograph as an instrument of education and business use as well as entertainment. Following his original invention patented in 1877, he began to build a stable of performers for his cylinder records; however, he was a better inventor than a businessman, and from the 1890s on the Edison Phonograph dominance was gradually lost to the more convenient and longer-playing flat disc records of his competitors. Finally, in 1910, Mr Edison made an attempt to regain his market position with the introduction of the Diamond Disc Record and Phonograph.

It is this phonograph that will provide the evening’s entertainment for the Newtown Historical Society on Monday, February 9, at 7:30 pm, in the Community Room of the Booth Library, 25 Main Street (Route 25), just south of the flagpole. The program will be presented by Joan Lubus.

Mr Edison’s strategy was to produce a record that could only be played on his machines, a strategy that failed to regain his market share in the face of the standard interchangeable discs of Victor, Columbia, and others. While the brand name Phonograph quickly became a common noun for a record player, Victrola took the market; even today, folks of a certain age will call any old record player a Victrola. But in the two decades that Mr Edison marketed his Diamond Discs he produced records of opera, World War I songs, vaudeville, marches, fox trots, folk tunes, and novelty songs, as well as many foreign language records for what he called “The Phonograph With A Soul.”

This wonderful musical history and much more will be presented by Ms Lubus, a Newtown resident and collector, using her own Diamond Disc Phonograph, including such standards as “Where Do You Work — A John,” “Barney Google,” “Ave Maria,” “Mother Macree” and others from the seemingly endless list of Edison offerings. It was an era of sound unlike any other, and Ms Lubus presents the audience with a pleasant and informative evening where she suggests listeners “will be pleased and astonished at the quality of these Diamond Disc records played on Mr Edison’s masterpiece.”

All Newtown Historical Society programs are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served at the program’s conclusion. For further information call the society at 426-5937.