Hi again Scott:
Initially ICS did advertise their Standard As and Bs as "Double Service for Every Phonograph, Amusement and Instruction." While the records continued to be black wax 2 minute records this made sense. A few turns of the governor speed knob and you could play both records. When the 4 minute Amberol records came out with added production expense and ICS was still using 2 minute home recording outfits to send customers feedback via home made recordings through the U.S. mail, there was no great reason to go to 4 minute capability. The 2 minute records were still being made for entertainment. Edison did ship Standard D Models with only 2 minute capability for the ICS market. These were sold to ICS at a nice discount and Edison did not want them to compete with the normal Edison line. By disabling the 4 minute function the machines were obsolete for prerecorded records but still worked just fine for 2 minute ICS cylinders. Remember that the 2 minute ICS record actually played for much longer since they were at 90 RPM rather than the 160 RPM of normal records. This made the voice recordings on ICS almost 4 minutes in length. The savings on machining the gears also saved Edison money in manufacturing. Gear cutting is one of the more costly machining steps in manufacture. They don't seem to have removed the gears but *never* installed them. The last few thousand of the Standard D were virtually all ICS machines with *only* the 2 minute gearing. So, the question really is why would Edison allow machines to be let out that would take away from their regular sales? When the ICS Gems came out they were designed to NOT be able to play anything but 2 minute records at 90 RPM. To answer your question on why the ICS company would be OK without the 4 minute prerecorded record capability, if they were getting the machines deeply discounted, why would they pay more for a feature they didn't need? The added expense of the extra Model H Reproducer and gears for 4 minutes wouldn't be justified. ICS only switched over to 4 minute records after the factory fire ended Standard production. They had even pleaded with Edison to provide a 2 minute Amberola 30 for their courses but Edison executives resisted having to make a separate special machine that would slow the production of normal Amberola 30 machines. It was September 1915, when Edison began making ICS Amberola 30s and they were 4 minute only. There is some indication today that the 4 minute Amberola ICS machines were not as successful as the earlier 2 minute (near 4 minute playing time 100 tpi at 90 RPM) Standards and Gems. The number of 4 minute recorders, 4 minute ICS cylinders, 4 minute ICS Amberola 30s, Special H Reproducers for Amberola, etc., are not great today. We should see more of them since they were sold into the late 1920s. Sorry to be so verbose! Best wishes, Al -----Original Message----- From: Scott Colgrove <[email protected]> To: phono-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Jan 26, 2012 8:40 am Subject: Re: [Phono-L] What is the price range for the ICS Standard C Al, Why would Edison have removed the 4-minute gearing from the Standard “D” just or ICS? Why wouldn’t ICS want 4-minute capability? I cannot imagine any usiness buying near-obsolete technology. ______________________________________________ hono-L mailing list ttp://phono-l.org _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.org
