page_title: His Master's Voice
section_title: The logo
hierarchical_section_title: His Master's Voice / The logo
caption_attribution_description: English: Victor Talking Machine Company logo
context_page_description: His Master's Voice was the unofficial name of a major British record label created in 1901 by The Gramophone Co. Ltd. The phrase was first coined in the 1890s as the title of a painting depicting a terrier-mix dog named Nipper listening to a wind-up disc gramophone. In the original painting, the dog is listening to a cylinder phonograph. It is a famous trademark in the recording industry.
  In the 1970s, the statue of the dog and gramophone, His Master's Voice, were cloaked in bronze and was awarded by the record company to artists or music producers or composers as a music award and often only after selling more than 100,000 recordings.
context_section_description: In early 1899, Francis Barraud applied for copyright of the original painting using the descriptive working title Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph. He was unable to sell the work to any cylinder phonograph company, but William Barry Owen, the American founder of the Gramophone Company in England, offered to purchase the painting under the condition that Barraud modify it to show one of their disc machines. Barraud complied and the image was first used on the company's catalogue from December 1899. As the trademark gained in popularity, several additional copies were subsequently commissioned from the artist for various corporate purposes. Emile Berliner, the inventor of the Gramophone, had seen the picture in London and took out a United States copyright on it in July 1900. The painting was adopted as a trademark by Berliner's business partner, Eldridge R. Johnson of the recently formed Consolidated Talking Machine Company, which was reorganized as the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901. Johnson first used the dog-and-gramophone image in print advertisements for Consolidated in the autumn of 1900. Beginning in February 1902, most Victor records had a simplified drawing of the image on their labels. Victor used the trademark far more ubiquitously than its UK affiliate.  Magazine and newspaper advertisements urged  buyers to "look for the dog." Victor erected a large illuminated advertising sign of Nipper on Broadway, near the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. In 1915, Victor installed stained glass windows depicting the logo in the tower of Building 17 of its manufacturing complex and headquarters in Camden, New Jersey; the building and windows remain today, and have long been an iconic symbol of both RCA Victor and of Camden's industrial heritage. 
  In British Commonwealth countries, the Gramophone Company did not use the dog on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the upper half of the record labels with the Nipper logo.
  The company was not formally called HMV or His Master's Voice, but rapidly became identified by that phrase due to its prominence on the record labels. Records issued by the company before February 1908 were generally referred to by record collectors  as "G&Ts", while those after that date are usually called "HMV" records.
  During World War I, the Gramophone Company's German branch, Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, severed ties with the British parent company and operated independently; DG retained the Nipper trademark for use in Germany until 1949, when the rights were sold to Electrola, which replaced DG as the EMI affiliate in Germany.
  The image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the US, Canada, and Latin America. In British Commonwealth countries (except for Canada, where Victor held the rights) it was used by various subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI.
  The trademark's ownership is divided among different companies in different countries, reducing its value in the globalised music market. The name HMV was used by a chain of music shops owned by HMV, mainly in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan.
  In 1921, the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company, of which Victor had owned 51% since 1920. RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI in 1931, which continued to control the His Master's Voice name and image in the UK. In 1935, RCA Victor sold its stake in EMI but continued to own the rights to His Master's Voice in the Americas. HMV continued to distribute Victor recordings in the UK and elsewhere until 1957, after EMI purchased Capitol Records as their distributor in the western hemisphere.
  The hostilities between Japan and the US during World War II led RCA Victor's Japanese subsidiary, the Victor Company of Japan (JVC), to secede from the American parent 
caption: Victor Talking Machine Company trademark
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