Here is a selection of advertisements for the Compagnie française du Gramophone, the French branch of the Gramophone Company, between 1903 and 1913.
Both the message and the iconography provide useful insights on how the gramophone and the record were marketed to gain the status of musical medium. These advertisements let us also discover the arguments usd by the Gramophone Company to promote its “lateral-cut” records against the “vertical-cut saphir” records sold by its French competitor Pathé (see the fascinating reference to Zola’s “J’accuse” where the Gramophone “sentences saphir machines to eternal silence“). Finally, they include lists of the Gramophone Company’s official dealers in France that turned out to be very useful for my Disquaires de Paris mapping project!
Source: Gallica
Ceints de bakélite 