The photographs can be divided into several categories. The collection consists of photographs and negatives relating to Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the Victor Talking Machine Company, which was purchased by RCA in 1929, and the RCA-Victor Division of Radio Corporation of America. RCA continued to diversity its products throughout the 1930s, expanding to include developments such as radar, airborne electronics and television. This merger allowed RCA to consolidate the research, engineering, manufacturing and sales of RCA products. The corporation became the RCA Victor Company in 1930. RCA desired its own manufacturing facilities, however, and purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company on March 15, 1929.

RCA quickly entered the broadcasting field in July 1921 and shortly thereafter began to sell home broadcasting equipment manufactured by GE and Westinghouse. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was incorporated in 1919, taking over the Marconi Wireless patents in the United States and focusing their efforts on international communications. The company continued to expand into the 1920s, when sales began to flatten with the popularity of radio. The Victor Talking Machine Company increased in success continually, signing Enrico Caruso and John Phillips Sousa to recording contracts, introducing the Victrola with its enclosed horn in 1906 and improving recording technology. In 1901, Johnson combined his patents with those of Emile Berliner, incorporating the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey and adopting the 'His MasterвЂ™s Voice' trademark from Berliner. In 1900, Eldridge Johnson formed the Consolidated Talking Machine Company with Leon F. When Emile Berliner underwent legal difficulties, Johnson decided to adopt a brand name and distribute his own gramophones.

In 1896, Eldridge Reeves Johnson, a machinist from Camden, New Jersey, developed a spring motor for the Berliner gramophone and began to produce motors, sound boxes and metal parts for Berliner Gramophone. BerlinerвЂ™s design improved on the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 as it allowed for ease of duplication from a master recording, but the hand-cranked gramophone could not maintain constant speed and pitch while playing. In 1895, Berliner and a group of investors started the Berliner Gramophone Company to manufacture the gramophone for commercial use. patent for the gramophone, the first commercially available flat disk playing phonograph. In 1887, German-born inventor Emile Berliner received a U.S. 252 photographic prints : b&w 5 x 7 in or smaller.

1930 rca victor radio ad