His name was
Nipper. He was — and still is — known as the
RCA dog. Not a talking dog nor a singing
dog, his fame came from listening. Yes, he
was a real dog! A fox terrier mix. Mark
Barraud adopted him when he found him
wandering the streets of Bristol, UK, in
1884. Barraud died two years later, and his
surviving brother Francis took Nipper to
Liverpool. There Francis pursued his
profession as an artist. While at work in
his studio, so the story goes, he would
listen to cylinder records played on an
early Edison phonograph. Nipper would sit
beside the phonograph and cock his head,
intrigued by the voices emanating from the
horn. Nipper lived on until 1895, and a few
years after that Barraud immortalized the
scene in a painting he called “Dog Looking
at and Listening to a Phonograph.” Nipper
today is better remembered than either his
master or some of the companies for which he
became a trademark.
Barraud
retitled his painting “His Master’s Voice”
and offered it for exhibition at the Royal
Academy. The offer was refused. Magazines
turned it down. The Edison Bell Company,
maker of the Edison cylinder phonograph,
showed no interest, it is said, “because
dogs don’t listen to phonographs.” In 1899,
when Barraud replaced the cylinder
phonograph in the painting with a Berliner
Gramophone flat-disc player, the manager of
Gramophone bought it and hung it in his
London office. Thus began Nipper’s career as
a successful marketing symbol. When Emile
Berliner himself, the inventor of the
gramophone, saw the painting he commissioned
a second copy and brought it to the United
States, where he obtained a trademark for it
in 1900. Ultimately the Nipper trademark was
licensed for use by the Victor Talking
Machine Company in Central and South
America, the Far East, and Japan. Nipper
became the RCA dog when Victor became part
of RCA in 1929.
His prominent
appearance on every RCA Victor record label
from 1929 until 1969 assured Nipper’s place
in the pantheon of canine celebrities. When
the RCA logo was redesigned at the
instigation of young Robert Sarnoff, Nipper
was temporarily retired, but returned to the
RCA record label in 1976.
Meanwhile,
three-dimensional Nippers in a variety of
materials and sizes were produced as
promotional items for distributors and
dealers. Eventually, these became highly
desirable to collectors of both animal- and
music-related memorabilia. Today, Nipper
aficionados can find authentic period and
newly minted Nipperabilia online. Examples
range from a vintage papier mache Nipper
(one sold for $736 in 2005) to a porcelain
ceramic music box with revolving Nipper and
gramophone (it plays “Oh Where has my little
dog gone”). A contemporary version of this
music box sold for $45 in 2006.
The number of
Nipper fans burgeoned in the 1970s, and many
of them would contact the RCA public
relations department for advice and
information. An RCA insider once confided
that at least one member of the department
had been assigned the task of handling these
inquiries. This individual, or individuals,
was jokingly called the “Nipper Nut
Department,” I was told.
Nipper
Landmarks
Nipper Nuts
wishing to make a pilgrimage to an important
historical landmark can journey to Albany,
N.Y. There, atop a building on Broadway that
was once a warehouse for an RCA distributor,
sits a statuesque Nipper estimated to weigh
four tons. Now the Arnoff Moving Co.
warehouse, the building once was the tallest
structure in Albany, and Nipper was then
required to have a red aircraft warning
beacon on his right ear.
Another
historic Nipper site is in Camden, N.J. In
its heyday, RCA entities occupied some 58
acres just across the river from
Philadelphia. RCA Victor was part of the
complex. In the early 1960s, the RCA Victor
Camden warehouse was demolished. Along with
it untold numbers of wax and metal disc
vault masters, lacquer discs, and rehearsal
recordings were bulldozed into the Delaware
River. But the famous Building 17 was saved.
Its noted architectural feature is the tower
that originally housed water tanks for fire
suppression. Stained-glass images of Nipper,
one at the top of each of its four walls,
were installed in 1916. In 1969, coincident
with Nipper’s premature retirement, they
were replaced with the new RCA logo. By
1979, with Nipper back in the good graces of
RCA, new copies of the original windows were
installed.
GE bought out
RCA in 1986, and by 1992 had abandoned the
building. Vandals and the elements took
their toll. The Nipper windows did not
survive. The Camden city fathers
commissioned replacement windows and, it is
reported, they were installed and first
illuminated on New Year’s Eve, 1998. The
hearts of Nipper fans were gladdened, but
disappointment soon set in. Peter Greene,
the president of the Victor Amateur Radio
Association, a club whose members are
employees or former employees of RCA, GE
Aerospace, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin,
and L-3 Communications Systems, and whose
headquarters are adjacent to former Nipper
Building 17, said the new windows were not
well made and many panes have fallen out.
Even when new, Greene told me, “they looked,
quite frankly, cheap.” In 2003, a developer
repurposed the building as upscale loft
apartments. If you hurry, you may catch a
glimpse of Nipper before the rest of the
panes fall out.
Nipper Today
In 1991, when
Nipper was, or would have been, close to
110, his son surprisingly appeared on the
scene. This chip-off-the-old-block was
appropriately named Chipper. Today real dogs
are used to impersonate Nipper and Chipper
in promotional appearances. In 2007, Nipper
and Chipper were honorary “spokesdogs” in a
promotional contest for a new RCA digital
camcorder. They starred in an online video
in which entrants were invited to submit a
short video of their own dog performing its
best trick for a canine talent contest
called “Wonder Woofs.” And Nipper Nuts have
embraced Chipper as a desirable addition to
their memorabilia collections. In 2007, you
could sign up to get a monthly RCA
newsletter from Nipper and Chipper, and,
while they lasted, a free Nipper key chain.
The Radio
Corporation of America is now defunct.
Thomson SA owns the trademark RCA, and
licenses it through its subsidiary, RCA
Trademark Management, SA. Stay tuned for
breaking news regarding who may use the
classic Nipper trademark. The history is
complex and the process volatile.
The large
international chain of retail music shops,
HMV (so named based on “His Master’s Voice”)
is not permitted to use Nipper in certain
countries, as for example in Japan, where
the trademark is exclusive to JVC (the
Victor Company of Japan). On the other hand,
JVC can use the Nipper trademark only in
Japan.
Owning Up
In the interest
of full disclosure, I admit that I have my
own collection of Nippers. For many years it
was on display at IEEE headquarters. Today
it includes a three-foot-tall polyethylene
“store Nipper” that I obtained while
visiting JVC a few years ago.
It is hard to
say what creates a Nipper Nut. In 1930, when
my father was a member of the design section
of the U.S. Signal Corps Radio Laboratories
at Fort Monmouth, he owned a fox terrier
named Nipper. Dad would occasionally take
“Nippy,” as I called him at home, to work,
where he became the de facto mascot of the
department. In an official photograph of the
design section’s personnel, there in the
second row is my dad, holding Nipper on his
lap. Today the photo hangs in my office.
Might it be
that Nippermania is in the genes? I wonder.
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