North American Phonograph Co. - 1891 dated Stock Certificate

Stock printed by New York Banknote Company. Attractive stock in bold orange and black colors!

The North American Phonograph Company was an early attempt to commercialize the maturing technologies of sound recording in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Though the company was largely unsuccessful in its goals due to legal, technical and financial problems, it set the stage for the modern recording industry in the mid 1890s. Thomas Edison successfully demonstrated sound recording and reproduction in late 1877 with the tinfoil phonograph. The invention caught the public's attention but its practical utility was limited due to low-fidelity and its single-use nature. Edison sold the rights to the phonograph to the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company in 1878 and shifted his focus to the development of electric light. Between 1880 and 1885, Alexander Graham Bell and his associates at the Volta Laboratory experimented with a variety of processes for improved sound recording. They eventually settled on a recording process based on cutting wax cylinders. On January 6, 1886, the associates formed the Volta Graphophone company and were awarded a patent on their wax cylinder process. Later in the year, Edison resumed research on the phonograph. On March 28, 1887, the Volta associates established the American Graphophone Company for the manufacturing and sale of graphophones, and Edison organized the Edison Phonograph Company in the following year to protect his new research in sound. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Phonograph_Company