A multimedia one-man show developed by musician and composer Christopher Andrew Maier on the history of the wind-up gramophone and the life of its inventor, Eldridge Reeves Johnson.

As a teen, Johnson was told by his school in Delaware that he was “too goddamned dumb” for college, and put to work in a Philadelphia machine shop. He eventually developed it into the full-scale manufacturing company known worldwide as Victor Talking Machine of Camden New Jersey. He was like Steve Jobs in developing consumer products that caught people’s imagination, and he turned the hand-cranked Berliner Gramophone into a spring-driven mass-market product, the hardware of its time. He produced software as well – 78 rpm shellac records, complete with the picture of the little dog peering into a gramophone horn to hear ‘His Master’s Voice’.

The show has a seamless video musical backcloth and includes a working 1907 gramophone with vintage discs, from Enrico Caruso’s operatic glories to Paul Whiteman’s Charleston dance music.