Ultraphon Explained

Ultraphon is both the name of a historic device to play recordings and a record label of the late 1920s.

Device

The inventor Heinrich J. Küchenmeister (1893–1966) from Berlin developed the Ultraphon in the early 1920s as a device to play records. In a round housing, it had with two sound boxes, two tone arms and two speakers at a right angle. As both needles ran at a fixed distance in the same groove, the effect was a gain in volume and a pseudo-stereo.

A company Deutsche Ultraphon AG was founded on 13 August 1925 to produce these devices. Küchenmeister was the main shareholder of the company that was based in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The new devices were no success, therefore the production was changed to normal phonographs. From 1928 Küchenmeister's company Bertona (short for Berliner Tonapparate-Fabrik) took over their production but it was discontinued in 1932.^[1]

Label

Küchenmeister planned an international business group together with the Dutch businessman and engineer Andreas Struve (1882–1954) with divisions for recordings, broadcasting and film.

The first holding was founded in May 1929, with mostly Dutch capital, the N.V. Küchenmeister's Internationale Maatschappij voor Accoustiek. It included a company for sound film, N.V. Küchenmeister's Internationale Maatschappij voor Sprekende Films (founded in December 1927, later the Tobis-Tonbild-Syndikat) and for broadcasting the N.V. Küchenmeister's Internationale Radio Maatschappij, which remained only planned.

N.V. Küchenmeister's Internationale Ultraphoon Maatschappij, founded in October 1928, was responsible for recording.^[2] It was merged with Deutsche Ultraphon in Berlin beginning of 1929, aiming at a national label in Germany. The first records were sold in the autumn of 1929.

Directed by, it produced a wide repertoire, with artists such as Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Schmidt and Erich Kleiber. The sound quality was high, an achievement of soound enginieers and Paul-Günther Erbslöh (1905–2002). The studio for recordings was the ball room of the Victoria-Garten in Berlin-Wilmersdorf.

The company was liquidated in 1932. Telefunken bought some of its machines and Matrizen and founded the Telefunkenplatte label.^[3]

International labels

International labels related to Ultraphon include:

• France: Ste. Internationale Ultraphone, in Villetaneuse, 1931 to 1939 independent as Société Ultraphone Française
• Netherlands: Ultraphon, Amsterdam
• Switzerland: Turicaphon, founded in October 1930 in Zürich
• Czechoslovakia: Ultraphon-Presswerk und Tonstudio, Prague from 1931. The production in Prague and its rights went to the Czech Ravitas. Domestic products were registered as Ultraphon while internationale werelabelled Supraphon. This label was successful in the 1930s selling classical music and jazz. After World War II, under Soviet occupation, the company became state-owned in 1946; both Ultraphon and Supraphon were for the Czech market, while international products were labelled Mercury Records. Ultraphon A.S. was renamed Supraphon A.S. in 1968 and is now the largest Czech record label.

Further reading

• Herman George Scheffauer: Super-Sound ‘Felt’ By German Singer. [Artist-Scientist Has Perfected an Invention Which, It Is Said, Will Affect Talking Machines and Prove of Value in Medical World.], in: The New York Times, November 8, 1925, p.6.
• Franz Schorn: Alte Schallplatten-Marken in Deutschland. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel 1988. ISBN 3-7959-0551-6
• Hansfried Sieben: Herbert Grenzebach: eine Leben für die Telefunken-Schallplatte. Düsseldorf: Sieben 1991
• Enrico Pigorsch: The record company Société Ultraphone Française]. In: Contributions to the history of the record industry, Vol. 12. Gesellschaft für historische Tonträger, Vienna 2022, ISBN 978-3-9502906-6-0, pp. 46–53.

External links

• Standgrammophon "Ultrahorn AG", Design von Heinrich J. Küchenmeister dorotheum.com

Notes and References

1. Hansfried Sieben: Herbert Grenzebach. Düsseldorf 1991, pp. 9–12
2. Dibbets, Karel: Tobis, made in Holland. In: Tonfilmfrieden/Tonfilmkrieg. Munich: edition text + kritik 2003. ISBN 3-88377-749-8
3. Oliver Wurl: Ultraphon reflects the tone: the rise and fall of an enterprising record company. In: Classical recordings quarterly. number 63, winter 2010, pp. 37–40.