Andy, Unfortunately, without some factory documentation of each model's serial numbers within a given month, exact dating for A-series Edison Disc Phonographs is quite difficult.? I've seen two types of paper license notices glued to the bottoms of these cabinets.? The earlier has no date at the bottom, and the later one has an April 1914 date.? Keep in mind that very few Edison Disc Phonographs were available to the public until Aug/Sept 1913, and the fire of Dec. 1914 put an end to most A-series production.? That gives roughly a 15-month window for most of our A-series machines.? Given the two different license notices, I break down the A-series dating to "late 1913/early 1914" and "mid/late 1914."? That's about as precise as I can get, given the limited information available.
I'd be interested in seeing a photo of your start/stop mechanism.? It sounds like one I had many years ago, and I'm pretty sure that it's the earliest version.? On page 39 of Frow's "Edison Disc Phonographs...", an "A-150" is shown with what appears to be the conventional start/stop device, and this photo is dated March 2, 1914.? Presuming that all models adopted this newer design at the same time, and your "A-250" carries a pre-April 1914 license notice, I'd date it as "late 1913/early 1914."? Hope this helps, George Paul ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. From [email protected] Fri Jun 22 07:28:59 2007 From: [email protected] (Peter Fraser) Date: Fri Jun 22 07:30:15 2007 Subject: [Phono-L] Edison stop survey, and reply to Oxidized bronze or copper flashing D.D. crank? In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> References: <[email protected]> <001101c7b424$1503a050$7201a...@lap> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> can you please post some pictures, or send some to me so that i can post them for folks to review? -- Peter [email protected] On Jun 21, 2007, at 10:28 PM, Andrew Baron wrote: > Thanks, George for this insight. Given that, and the reasonably > good fit to the relatively small A-200 cabinet, this does seem a > likely origin of this particular crank. > > Do you think you could shed a light on the question I've posted a > couple of times over the past few days, regarding whether the user- > adjustable (semi-automatic) stop on my ser. no. 1429 A-250 was the > first type of stop scheme that Edison employed on the new Disc > Phonograph? In this arrangement, there's a small round knob on the > start lever, which can also serve as a manual stop lever. > > Any idea of when that type of stop was discontinued in favor of the > more familiar type with the rigid stop trip lever on the lift post? > > I'd like to informally survey any owners of these early Edison Disc > Phonographs that have this unusual early style stop, to find out > the model and serial numbers of the machines that have it. To show > graphically what I'm referring to, I can email a photo of this odd > lever arrangement to anyone who might like to help. > > I'm hoping to use this detail and possibly others to learn > approximately when my early A-250 was built. > > Best regards, > Andy > > > On Jun 21, 2007, at 7:10 PM, [email protected] wrote: > >> >> Andy, >> >> The "A-150" Disc Phonograph was regularly supplied with an >> oxidized bronze finish on its metal parts. >> >> George Paul > _______________________________________________ > Phono-L mailing list > http://phono-l.oldcrank.org
