Chicago Talking Machine Company

[1] The company was founded in 1893 by Leon Douglass and Henry Babson, with financing from Charles Dickinson.

[2][3] It first sold phonographs and supplies manufactured by the Edison Phonograph Works, but soon began manufacturing their own cylinder records and marketing a spring motor designed by Edward H.

Silas Leachman, a Chicago-based recording pioneer who specialized in coon songs, was their most popular artist.

[6] In 1898, Leon Douglass, who had previously invented a coin-operation mechanism and phonograph record duplication process, invented the "Polyphone", which added a second horn and reproducer to the phonograph or graphophone to increase its loudness (and, supposedly, its fidelity).

He formed The Polyphone Company at the same address as The Talking Machine Company (having dropped the "Chicago" prefix) to market the device[7] and would focus on this aspect of the business until joining Eldridge Johnson in 1900 to begin working on what would become the Victor Talking Machine Company.