Brunswick

Brunswick-Balke-Collender made bowling alleys, billiard tables and phonograph cabinets before it began pressing records in earnest around 1920. It arrived late and had to compete on sound quality, which it did with unusual seriousness.

In 1925 Brunswick introduced its Light-Ray process, developed with General Electric: a photoelectric system that recorded the signal optically rather than through a conventional electromagnetic cutter. It was a genuine alternative to the Western Electric method that Victor and Columbia had licensed, and on good copies the results are remarkable.

Brunswick's catalogue passed to Warner Brothers in 1930 and then to the American Record Corporation, and the label carried on under other owners long after the parent company had gone back to sporting goods.