Welcome to the Pathé page
The Pathé Pathephone is a French machine that had very little market share in England or America. On the Continent it was a major player. It was made in New York briefly in 1915 during the WWI but never really caught on. That makes it easy to date mine since the tag states it was made in New York.
Pathé was founded by Charles and Emile Pathé, who were owners of a successful bistro in Paris. About 1890, they saw an Edison Phonograph demonstrated at a fair and were captivated by the device and arranged to lease one as an attraction at their bistro. It was so successful that they decided to design their own phonograph which also led to them designing phonograph cylinders and, eventually, records. Their unique designs came about by their quest to produce something that would not infringe on Edison's patents. Technologically it is interesting. It used a sapphire ball instead of a needle and used the vertical method of recording. Of my phonographs it is the dimmest sounding of them all, with the narrowest frequency response. It reminds me of the quality of music playing on a telephone. Still it's cool, since it sounds more like the stereotypical "Victrola sound" that people have come to associate with the acoustic era in general. The sound quality is poor because they recorded on a huge barrel sized drum and then transferred that recording to disk. By doing this, they took a weak acoustic signal, distorted it through a tube and transferred it to yet another acoustic recording loosing what frequency response the original had. This may be another reason why they never caught on here, since the buying public had the Victrola and the even higher quality Edison to choose from, both of whom used "direct to disk" recording (my fellow 1970's survivors will appreciate the pun). But on the other hand, the sapphire ball moving vertically in the record groove caused almost no damage at all even after thousands of plays, unlike the lateral cut 78RPM records used by Victor and most of the others which wear out rather quickly.
There is hardly any information anywhere on the web or publications I have been able to find on this Pathé, so this page by necessity will be limited.
I found it in an antique shop in Noblesville Indiana. It was filthy from decades of cigarette smoke, grease and crud. It was all scratched up. The grill was busted out and thus had a very small price tag. It did however have 20 Pathé records. I bought it just because it was so uncommon (and cheap, a paltry $90) and after bringing it home I scrubbed it for hours to get the grime off. Much to my surprise I found all the scratches were in the layers of grime and it had a beautiful tiger oak finish. I hand carved a new grill for it out of quarter sawn white oak using what was left of the original as a template and installed a new mica diaphragm and seals in the reproducer. It stands in the dining room and is a true ugly duckling to swan story.
Here are a few mp3s of the Pathé records that came with it:
Indiana by the Sterling Trio
Brighten The Corner Where You Are by William Wheeler
My Old Kentucky Home by Lillian Heyward
Carry Me Back To Old Verginny by Cambell and Burr
The Daughter Of Mother MacCrea by Andre Sarto
New 3 August 2008. I have added a strangely compelling waltz from a Pathé record. It is The Passing of Salome waltz by Archibald Joyce. I digitized it by playing it on a standard DJ turntable at 25 RPM with a 78 RPM cartridge using Sony Sound Forge Audio where I brough it up to speed. I did this hoping to get it a little more faithfully than with a microphone since it is an unusually high quality recording. This mp3 does it little justice, but at least I am getting it before the public to share my enjoyment of this hauntingly lovely music. Interestingly it plays better on my Brunswick Ultona than my Pathé.
Here are some photographs of it:
Here is a close-up of the unique reproducer it uses.
