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of Wurth's trial plant and began design the automatic
machinery for the duplicating facilities Edison planned. Edison realized
the dream one his machines every home, announcing that
"There family poor that cannot buy talking
, 4
machine. Each year the
twentieth century brought increase sales. In
1892 the records had been high priced and low quality.'*'®
In 1902 The Edison Phonograph Works made nine phonograph
models, their prices ranging from $10 $100. Output
of records was 25,000 day 1903 and rising rapidly. Phonograph sales the 1890s started from a
ceiling $25,000 per annum and reached quarter million
dollars per annum the end the decade.
Edison's phonograph business had moved from amusement
parlors the living rooms average Americans. The
return years experiments duplicating— carried out
without interruption since 1888 according Edison— had now
paid off; the moulded cylinder records that sold for cents,
T O
cost only cents make. Ten years
earlier Tate had seen that the business selling machines was
12
based the availability reasonably priced records."
. 1902,
with phonograph sales soaring, the National Phonograph Company
could now deliver the right product the right time. The first
decade the twentieth century marked the transformation a
novelty into article mass consumption, and one part a
diversified business the core industry the Edison
enterprise
