After all, the phonograph was TAE's favorite invention & "baby", so it's
understandable that it turned out to be a not-profitable hobby. The
production of Diamond Discs still looks laborious and complicated, so that's
also no surprise if they didn't turn a profit. (What did the jobbers pay
for $1 discs, and what did the dealers pay the jobbers?) I suspect that
the Blue Amberol line might've been shown to be less profitable than they
thought, if they'd properly divided the costs of recording the original Disc
masters between Disc and Cylinder issues.
I think it all goes to show that Edison, who certainly had at least as
many faults as the rest of us, still wasn't the "greedy b*stard" that some
uninformed hero-killers insist. He could've been many times more wealthy,
as Henry Ford noted, but was content to make enough cash to feed his
invention habit, take care of his family and have some left over.
----- Original Message -----
Arthur Walsh comments near the end that Disc Records were "always a
looser" as far as he could tell in terms of money and then provides data
from accounting showing that indeed from 1925- they lost around the tune
of 1.7MM. Is that really true - even when sales were brisk in 1918-22 that
Diamond Discs lost Edison money? Or is that not the whole picture..
Also interesting was a comment that Blue Amberol Cylinders had lost money
since 1927 and the implication is that while small in sales it was
profitable to make Blue Amberol records up until very close to the end of
the Phonograph division.
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