Indestructible Record Company

{{short description|Defunct American music company that sold cylinder records}} {{Infobox record label  | name =Indestructible Record Company | image =  | founded = {{start date|1906}} | founder = William Messer | defunct ={{end date|1925}} | status = Defunct | distributor = | genre = Various | country = U.S. | location = Albany, New York }} 200 px|thumb|right|Indestructible cylinder records {{listen|filename=Estellita Waltz played by Samuel Siegel and Roy Butin.ogg|title=Samuel Siegel and Roy Butin play ''Estillita Waltz''.|description=An example of an '''Indestructible Record''' recording from 1908 with Samuel Siegel on mandolin and Roy Butin on guitar.}} The '''Indestructible Record Company''' was an American record label that produced plastic cylinder records between 1907 and 1922.

The company was established by William Messer, who had worked with Thomas Lambert, the inventor of plastic celluloid cylinder records. In 1900, the records were made by the Lambert Company, but that company went bankrupt in early 1906 after Thomas Edison brought a suit against Lambert for patent infringement. Messer had been responsible for developing a means of mass-producing the Lambert cylinders using a steam press. In 1906 he set up the Indestructible Phonographic Record Co. in Albany, New York, to record and produce them.<ref name="Hoffman2004">{{cite book |last=Hoffman|first=Frank |title=Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xV6tghvO0oMC&pg=PA261 |date=21 August 2004 |publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-203-48427-2|pages=261–}}</ref>

The company was also known as the Albany Indestructible Record Company and acquired the patent rights held by Lambert.<ref name=klinger>[https://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/pdf/klinger.pdf Bill Klinger, ''Cylinder Records: Significance, Production, and Survival'', Library of Congress, 2007, pp.4-14]</ref> It produced celluloid cylinders in two-minute and, from 1909, four-minute versions, each having a cardboard core with metal reinforcing rings.<ref>[http://www.edisonphonology.com/cylinder.htm Edison Cylinder and Disc Record Development, July 1906]. Retrieved 18 May 2013</ref> Between 1907 and 1922, it produced 1,598 titles, almost all of which have survived. The cylinders are described as "rugged" and "practically immune to splitting".<ref name=klinger/>

From 1908 to 1912, the Indestructible Company's output was distributed by Columbia Records.<ref name="WelchBurt1994">{{cite book|last1=Walter|first1=Leslie Welch|last2=Stenzel|first2=Burt|last3=Leah|first3=Brodbeck |title=From Tinfoil to Stereo: The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry, 1877-1929|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Rz0Z7AT8TwC&pg=PA85 |year=1994 |publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=978-0-8130-1317-6|pages=85–}}</ref> After the arrangement with Columbia ended, the cylinders were sold directly by the firm as well as through Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward retail stores. In 1917 the company was re-organized as the Federal Record Corporation of Albany, New York, which began disc record production in 1919 as the Federal label.<ref name="Sutton">{{cite book |last1=Sutton|first1=Allan| title=American Record Labels and Companies: An Encyclopedia (1891–1943) |date=2000|publisher=Mainspring Press |location= Denver, Colorado|isbn=0-9671819-0-9|page=83}}</ref> After a factory fire in 1922, the company ceased making cylinders, and it formally closed down in 1925.<ref name="Hoffman2004"/>

==References== {{Reflist}} {{Authority control}} Category:American record labels Category:Cylinder record producers Category:Record labels established in 1906 Category:American companies established in 1906