August 1877: Edison invents the first phonograph.
14 June 1878: The phonograph was demonstrated in Australia to a meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria by the Society’s Honorary Secretary, Alex Sutherland.
28 May 1890: Professor Douglas Archibald delivers a series of public lectures and demonstrations of Edison’s Perfected Phonograph in Sydney. His sponsor was a businessman named James Macmahon.
1890: James Macmahon approached Edison to purchase coin-operated machines for installation in public venues. By the mid-1980s Edison offered franchises to ‘jobbers’ to assemble and retail his phonographs, all under licence to Edison.
16 December 1893: The first advert for a ‘Gramophone’ appears in The Bulletin.
1896: The earliest surviving recordings by Thomas Rome, a bootmaker from Warrnambool, Victoria. Rome exhibited his phonograph in November 1896 at the Warrnambool Industrial and Art Exhibition. There are 58 cylinders of various recordings at The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Here is an excellent page on the very first Australian recording.
1898: Columbia Phonographs are widely advertised alongside Edison Phonographs and Berliner Gramophones. This same year, the first anthropological field recordings of Torres Strait Islanders were made by Alfred Haddon and Fanny Smith, a First Nations Tasmanian woman.
1900: The Gramophone Company (UK) sent 25,000 recordings and a large quantity of gramophones to Australia to establish a distribution branch under the direct control of the London office. Over the next two years, sales figures were low and the business was sold to the Sydney record retailer, Hoffnung & Co. Ltd.
1901: Field recordings of Aboriginal languages were made by Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer during several expeditions to Central Australia between 1901 and 1912.
1903: The Edison monopoly ends with the expiry of its British patents in 1903.
1903: Edwin C. Henderson establishes the Federal Phonograph Record and Supply Co. in Sydney. The company sold cylinder records on the ‘Federal’ label of the visiting Italian tenor, Carlo Dani. Local musicians were soon added. However, the cylinders were inferior to Edison’s imported moulded cylinders and the business soon collapsed. In October 1904, Henderson again set up the Australia Phono Record Company but liquidated it in April 1905.
1905: The Gramophone Company had a distribution agreement with Sydney retailer Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. It was 1925 before they established a permanent base in Australia.
1906-1907: Edwin C. Henderson developed his own moulded cylinders and in 1907 the first recordings made under the ‘Australia’ label were released. They were mostly concert songs and marches played by the Naval Brigade Band or the Australia Military Band, which did not sell well, and finally Henderson gave up.
1906: Jackson and MacDonald acquired a jobber’s franchise for Edison’s Pioneer machines. By 1912, they had moved onto making the very first Australian-made gramophone, the Rexophone. Soon they were the largest talking machine manufacturing business in the Commonwealth.
21 May 1907: The Aeolian Company of New York City sets up The Pianola Company Proprietary Limited in Melbourne. The local company started importing Vocalion phonographs from 1915 and Vocalion Records in 1917/18. By 1921 the company had changed its name to the Aeolian Company (Australia) Proprietary Limited and were producing huge numbers of gramophones based on the US patents with several Australian designed features. These included the Graduola, a famous volume control device for phonographs, which was designed and built by the Australian inventor, F.J. Empson. By 1927 Vocalion (and ACO) records were being pressed locally in Melbourne.
1908: A local Melbourne company tried to establish the labels ‘Empire’ and ‘Entertainer’, but this operation seems to have ceased by 1910.
1909: Max Wurcker, an Edison jobber in Sydney, designed a 2-minute reproducer to fit an Edison phonograph. It had an aluminium diaphragm instead of the usual mica.
1914: The first Australian Salonola appears as a high-end cabinet gramophone made entirely in Australia using quality imported European metal parts and locally made cabinets. The Salonola first appears in advertising in August 1914 as a gramophone made exclusively for Alex Pogonowski. By December 1916, they are being sold by Heiron and Smith Ltd at their showrooms in George Street, Sydney. By May 1919 the company also starts advertising a quote from the Director of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mr. Henri Verbrugghen, praising the Salonola. In October 1920 we see another highly detailed advertisement, confirming the company Home Recreations Ltd taking ownership of the Heiron and Smith Ltd name.
1921: Brunswick (USA) distributed their products in Australia via the Sydney-based music publisher, D. Davis & Co. Ltd. The rising sales figures motivated the Brunswick to establish a record plant in July 1924. Brunswick released ‘hit’ records of American stars such as Al Jolson, Marion Harris, and Nick Lucas. For the first time in Australia, the production figures were behind on orders. In 1925 capacities were increased and record imports intensified. Brunswick also released recordings of jazz giants such as Red Nichols, King Oliver, Duke Ellington, Clarence Williams, and Johnny Dodds.
1923: Noel Pemberton Billing immigrated to Australia from London, bringing with him his World Record Controller which could play the very first linear long-playing records. They were released under several unsuccessful labels, ‘Austral’, ‘Wafer’ and ‘Condor’. By 1926, Billing had returned to the UK.
1925: Tasmanian engineer Eric Waterworth developed and patented the world’s first Electric Record Changer, which by 1927 was being demonstrated in a Salonola. Unfortunately if never made it to market. By 1930 Salonola gramophones had disappeared from Australian advertising altogether.
1925: The Vocalion Gramophone Co. was incorporated and set up a record plant and recording studio in Richmond, Melbourne. By July 1927, the first Vocalian records came off the presses. Soon other labels were introduced to the Australian market. The ‘Polydor’ label of Deutsche Grammophon as well as the ‘Gennett’ label of the Starr Piano Company of Richmond, Indiana, were produced under licence.
1925-1926: The Gramophone Co. established a gramophone and record plant in Sydney, pressing the ‘His Master’s Voice’ records and the budget ‘Zonophone’ labels, with a monthly capacity of 150,000 records. General Manager William Manson reported to the company’s headquarters in London: “According to the figures given to me, the sales of His Master’s Voice and Zonophone records in Australia from July 1st 1924 to June 30th 1925 amounted to 1,321,403 records. During the same period, sales of His Master’s Voice records in New Zealand were 201,677, making a total for both countries of 1,523,080, or an average of 127,000 records per month… Taking everything into consideration, I feel we are safe in anticipating the receipt of orders at the rate of 2,000,000 records per annum, with a strong probabilty of an increase to 2,400,000 within a year, provided there are no manufacturing difficulties or big slumps in the general trade.”
1927: Frederick George Mitchell formed the Unbreakable Disc Records Ltd. It was incorporated in Melbourne using the World Record record plant and recording studios as production facilities. Production started in May 1928, under the ‘Aeroplane’ and ‘Golden Tongue’ labels. By September 1930, the company was renamed Flexible Records Co. Ltd., which released the ‘Bellbird’ label. They were gone by 1930.
1928: Vocalion Foreign Ltd. acquired the Australian factory. The ‘Vocalion’ and the ‘Aco’ labels were discontinued and replaced by ‘Broadcast’, ‘Broadcast De Luxe’, ‘Broadcast Twelve’, ‘Embassy’, ‘Arcadia’, and ‘Savoy’. However, after a fire in early 1933, all work at the Richmond factory was ceased.
1931: Due to the Great Depression, the two biggest players in the music industry, The Gramophone Company and the Columbia Graphophone Company were forced to amalgamate to EMI. The ‘HMV’ and ‘Zonophone’ labels was transferred to the Columbia pressing plant in Sydney. As a result of the merger, The Gramophone Company got access to a recording studio in Australia and, for the first time, was able to record and press local artists for the local and export markets. The first records were recordings of the British comedian, John Henry, and the Australian pianists, Isador Goodman and Molly De Gunst.