In 1933 an experimental TV station in Camden broadcast a moving picture image to a prototype TV set in Collingswood. RCA's Camden facilities played a major role in the development of the technology that would eclipse radio as the most revolutionary medium: television.
Along with record players, the waterfront RCA-Victor complex became the world's largest manufacturers of radio sets. The merger quickly made Camden a leading center in the new broadcast medium. In 1929 the Victor Talking Machine Company was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America, a New York firm that had, in the previous ten years, done for the development of commercially viable radio what Victor had done for recorded music. Above, right, is the Victor Talking Machine orchestra recording a song in Camden in 1916. The disk was then used to stamp out records played on hand-cranked home Victorolas that converted the groove patterns back into audible sound. Instead, musicians played up close to a large sound horn that was connected to a needle that converted vibrations into grooved patterns on a master disk.
The early years of recorded music used recording and playback devices powered by springs rather than electricity. As shown in this 1917 magazine cover painting (above, right), it was the most visually striking landmark along a waterfront that was then the gateway to the city in an era before river bridges existed. The "Nipper" tower was built to instantly become an icon of the company as well as the city. By 1910 the company was an industrial colossus sprawling across Camden's downtown. With its business exploding, Victor Talking Machine quickly moved into this factory building (above, left) on Front Street just off Cooper. Its first hand-cranked music machine, bearing the "His Master's Voice" Nipper logo, is pictured above, right.
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By 1900 he was manufacturing recorded music on the flat disks we would come to know as "records." And by the next year, after prevailing in a series of grueling legal battles over the product, he started the Victor Talking Machine Company here. Front street in 1896, 29-year-old machinist Eldridge Johnson invented the spring mechanism that made recorded music a commercially viable possibility. And what went on there for nearly a century dramatically changed our world in several ways. Also known as RCA Building 17, it was once the center of an industrial complex as large as a small city.
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The structure's tower is emblazoned on all four sides with gigantic stained glass windows showing the brand icon of the RCA Victor Company. Standing as the central landmark of this city since the early years of the twentieth century, the "Nipper Building" is also a monument to Camden's crucial role in the development of the modern music, radio and television business. A PHOTO HISTORY OF RCA'S GOLDEN YEARS IN CAMDEN Pioneering The Technology of Music and TVĬAMDEN, N.J.