rca: D9-19

Another piece of information that might help to date this radio is the following printing on the front, just below the knobs: 

"Made in the United States of America for the Gramophone Company Limited, Hayes, Middlesex, England"

This would explain the step-down transformer.

Regards

Nigel

 

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The Gramophone Company  (UK) was owned by Victor Talking Machine Co. of NJ USA. Victor was bought by RCA and became RCA Victor.  The Gramophone Company marketed under the brand HMV (His Master's Voice, see models, also many Marconiphone and Columbia are same chassis) with the dog listening to a Gramophone logo, which Victor also had the rights to. The dog was real English dog, Nipper and the painter originally had him listening to an Edison Phonograph. However Edison wasn't interested in buying it (he prefered to get IP for nothing).

Hence RCA and HMV ended up with the same logo. The Gramophone Company (UK) bought the Columbia Co. (UK, not the North American / CBS Columbia) and the new Holding company was EMI. EMI and RCA thus collaborated for very many years, co-operating over Electronic TV (Baird's and Farnsworth's systems could never achieve even 1/50,000th of sensitivity at only 220 lines and as lines are higher, 441, 405, 525 etc the gap in performance vs lines is squared!).

So no surprise really that RCA might supply a model to The Gramophone Company.

Marconi was one of the original shareholders of RCA, but as a "foreigner" the US Goverment forced him out. By the 1920s Marconi didn't really make receivers, from even 1918 Plessey was making them, so in the early 1920s Marconi licensed the "signature", Marconi and Marconiphone brands to EMI (The Gramophone Co. originally owned by Victor Talking Machines, bought by RCA). This was very logical choice given the cordial relationship and past ownership with RCA! 

Thorn eventually ended up with all the UK brand rights for many years for Models, but for music Publishing EMI was separate (became part of Sony). The HMV brand (The Gramophone Co.) was spun off and became Retail shops, recently closed.

RCA ended in 1986 basically, part of the remains bought by GE, one of the original Shareholders with Marconi. The RCA domestic Model brand is now owned by French Thomson.

However I never heard of or saw an RCA directly adapated with an extra transformer for UK market to be distributed by the Gramophone Company. But for 1935/ 1936 (serious RCA /EMI TV collaboration) it's very plausible. Interestingly all most (except very small screens) all the pre 1939 UK TVs used long tubes mounted vertically with a viewing mirror in the lid of a very similar cabinet design to that RCA radiogram such as Murphy A42V (Unfortunately the Museum has very few pre WWII UK TV photos, the selection here isn't representative at time I write this).

 

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Perhaps you need to create a new HMV model with the details of the D9-19 and we can move the photos.

If you create it then we can see what the Model Admins think of the idea.

 

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