Dedication to The Phonoscope

If you're a follower of my blog, you will very much know the significance of the magazine pictured above. I have been wanting to do a post about the inner workings of this geeky and gossip-filled magazine of the late 1890's. 

Of course, we all know the man who started it:

Russell Hunting started this magazine a few months after he was released from prison in 1896 and started the magazine's first issue on a good funny note. He and his recording friends at Columbia wrote a majority of the magazine's little articles, and spread around gossip that was going around the studios. Here's some of his friends who wrote along with Hunting: 

Gaskin

Graham

Myers

Spencer

Porter

Hylands 

Harding

And that's not even every one! 

The Phonocsope became a place where all of Hunting's friends could spread stories and rumors among the recording studios, and get things across that they didn't necessarily want to say to the people they were speaking of. It was a sort of Blog. If Hunting could get any speck of his nasty sense of humor out there, he was happy. 

Which he did. In the first few issues of the magazine, he really got out his humor in the "Our Tattler" section. He sometimes even spread funny little stories about his friends here an there. 

(hehe, this one always makes me laugh. Oh ! J. W. Myers!)

(this one is a very obscure music joke, I barely get it myself!)

(we all know who's sitting at that piano in the one above.)

 This magazine created a new friendship between many of the artists at Columbia, and it advertised their many ventures into the many different aspects of the music business. And it's interesting to see what names appear more often than others, and who comes up when. 

Here's an example: 

Fred Hylands was not mentioned at all in the 1896 and 1897 issues of The Phonoscope, but he was all over the 1898 and 1899 issues. 

It was what was going on in the studios, and the things that the eccentrics were talking about. They can easily be compared to those working in the big technology businesses of Central California. As they all ganged up to judge the newest who came into the business, and the ones who had been in the business for years could make the decisions of who would be on the staff with the prestigious group of weirdos that was the Columbia Phonograph Company. 

Notice that The Phonoscope was biased, as they focused more on Columbia's ventures and employees rather than Edison. Well, that's what happens when the founder was a dedicated Columbia artist. 

Edison's manager Walter Miller could only take so much of Hunting, and some of his gang. 

*Sorry I haven't posted for a while, I was staying in L. A. for a few days, so I didn't have my computer to post anything. *

I hope you enjoyed this!