According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a terrier named Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother, Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis supposedly inherited Nipper, along with a cylinder phonograph and recordings of Mark's voice; but that was impossible since Mark died in 1887. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the horn, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas. The incident took place at 92 Bold Street, Liverpool. While the story of Nipper being curious about sounds emanating from the then-new invention could be true, it has been debunked that he was listening to his dead master's voice on a gramophone[citation needed] (a cylinder phonograph in the original painting).[citation needed]
Emile Berliner, the inventor of the Gramophone, had (supposedly) seen the picture in London and took out a United States Trademark on it (Filed May 26 & Reg July 10, 1900); but Berliner was not in England in 1900. It is more likely that the British "Rembrandt" Print was brought TO the USA. The painting was also adopted (ca Oct 1900) by Berliner's business partner, Eldridge R. Johnson of the recently formed Consolidated Talking Machine Company, which was reorganized as the Victor Talking Machine Company in October 1901.[citation needed]
Johnson first used the dog-and-gramophone image in print advertisements for Consolidated in the autumn of 1900. Beginning in February 1902, most Victor records had a simplified drawing of the image on their labels. The Victor Company used the trademark far more ubiquitously than its UK affiliate, placing it on virtually all Victor products. Newspaper and magazine advertisements urged buyers to "look for the dog." Victor erected a fifty foot square illuminated advertising sign of Nipper at Broadway and 37th street, near the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. In 1915, Victor installed stained glass windows depicting the logo in the tower of Building 17 of its manufacturing complex and headquarters in Camden, New Jersey; the building and windows remain today, and have long been an iconic symbol of both RCA Victor and of Camden's industrial heritage.[citation needed]
In British Commonwealth countries, the Gramophone Company did not use the dog on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the upper half of the record labels with the Nipper logo.[citation needed]
The company was not formally called HMV or His Master's Voice, but rapidly became identified by that phrase due to its prominence on the record labels. Records issued by the company before February 1908 were generally referred to by record collectors as "G&Ts", while those after that date are usually called "HMV" records.[citation needed]
During World War I, the Gramophone Company's German branch, Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, severed ties with the British parent company and operated independently; DG retained the Nipper trademark for use in Germany until 1949, when the rights were sold to Electrola, which replaced DG as the EMI affiliate in Germany. The image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the US, Canada, and Latin America. In British Commonwealth countries (excluding Canada, where Victor held the rights) it was used by various subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI.[citation needed]
In 1921, the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company, of which Victor had owned 51% since 1920. RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI in 1931, which continued to control the His Master's Voice name and image in the UK. In 1935, RCA Victor sold its stake in EMI but continued to own the rights to His Master's Voice in the Americas. HMV continued to distribute Victor recordings in the UK and elsewhere until 1957, after EMI purchased Capitol Records as their distributor in the western hemisphere.[citation needed]
The hostilities between Japan and the US during World War II led RCA Victor's Japanese subsidiary, the Victor Company of Japan (JVC), to secede from the American parent company and become independent. Today, JVCKenwood retains the "Victor" brand name and Nipper trademark for use in Japan only. HMV music shops in Canada and Japan were not allowed use of Nipper for these reasons; nor did the shops HMV operated in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1968, RCA introduced a new, modern logo and retired the Nipper trademark, removing it from virtually all RCA advertising and products with the exception of Red Seal album covers. In 1976, largely due to public demand, RCA revived the trademark and reinstated Nipper to most RCA record labels in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Nipper was once again widely used in RCA advertising, and the trademark reappeared for a time on RCA television sets and the ill-fated RCA CED videodisc system.[citation needed]
The dog-and-gramophone image is now licensed by RCA Records and its parent company, Sony Music Entertainment, from Technicolor SA, which operates RCA's consumer electronics division (still promoted by Nipper the dog). Thomson SA acquired the division from General Electric after GE absorbed the RCA Corporation in 1986. (Thomson SA (now Technicolor SA) bought the RCA trademarks, including Nipper in the Americas, from GE in 2003.)The image of "His Master's Voice" exists in the U.S. as a trademark only on radios and radios combined with phonographs; the trademark is owned by RCA Trademark Management SA, a subsidiary of Technicolor.[citation needed]
With that exception, the "His Master's Voice" dog-and-gramophone image is in the public domain in the U.S., its trademark registrations having expired in 1989 (for sound recordings and phonograph cabinets), 1992 (television sets, television-radio combination sets), and 1994 (sound recording and reproducing machines, needles, and records).[citation needed]
The "His Master's Voice" logo was used around the world, and the motto became well known in different languages. These include "La voix de son maître," (French), "La voz de su amo" (Spanish), "A voz do dono" (Portuguese), "La voce del padrone" (Italian), "Die Stimme seines Herrn" (German), "Husbondens Röst" (Swedish), "Głos Swego Pana" (Polish), "Sin Herres Stemme" (Norwegian), "Sahibinin Sesi" (Turkish) and "他的大师之声" (Chinese).[citation needed]
The 1958 LP album cover of Elvis' Golden Records shows pictures of various RCA 45s with Nipper on their labels. On the British version, these images were blacked out for copyright reasons. This type of editing took place with many other foreign versions of US RCA releases. Similarly, the album covers and labels of RCA and EMI imports which were sold in other countries, often had a sticker placed over the Nipper trademark.[citation needed]
In the 1946 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon Daffy Doodles, Daffy Duck is a "mustache fiend" who draws mustaches on advertising signs, including one of "His Master's Voice".[citation needed]
The icon for Macintosh software SoundEdit is a dog similar to Nipper listening to a Macintosh computer.
The movie Superman Returns (2006) contains a scene early on set in Kansas, in which a "His Master's Voice" radio is clearly shown. His Master's Voice radios have never been sold in the U.S., due to RCA holding the "Nipper" copyright. The movie was made in Australia, and the nearest "prop" was obviously used.[citation needed]
In the 2008 film Valkyrie, a Deutsche Grammophon recording of "Ride of the Valkyries" with Nipper and the "Die Stimme seines Herrn" motto on the label was shown spinning on a 78-rpm wind-up gramophone as the music played in the protagonist's living room.[citation needed]
Homage is paid to the iconic dog-and-gramophone image in the 1999 feature film Wild Wild West in which a dog resembling Nipper runs to the side of a recently departed character and looks into an ear horn. The film, however, is set in 1869, 30 years before Barraud created his work.[citation needed]
Staffers at the US public media organization NPR (National Public Radio) noted the similarity of sound between NPR and 'Nipper', and informally adopted the Nipper dog as a mascot. For several years in the 1990s a larger-than-life-size plastic statue of the dog Nipper graced the main entrance lobby of the network's headquarters building in Washington, DC.[citation needed]
EMI continued to expand internationally through the 1990s. The name HMV is still used by the chain of entertainment shops founded by the Gramophone Company in the UK and, until 2017, in Canada.[citation needed]
In 1998 HMV Media was created as a separate company, leaving EMI with a 43% stake. The firm bought the Waterstones chain of bookshops and merged them with Dillons the UK booksellers. In 2002 it floated on the London Stock Exchange as HMV Group plc, leaving EMI with only a token holding.[citation needed]
The website is operated by HMV Guernsey.[citation needed]
According to the HMV website, the organization was restructured by Hilco and, while some stores were closed, it has reopened debt-free and continues to trade.[citation needed]
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