~The History of NIPPER~
We named our company Nipper's Hot Dogs to connect our business with the Capital Region.
Nipper is the name of the dog which sits atop the Arnoff building (formally the RCA building) in
North Albany.
Nipper is an Albany landmark
Here is the inside scoop on how and why Nipper became so famous as the symbol of RCA.
Nipper, the dog was born in Bristol, England in 1884. Nipper was a mutt, part bull terrier and a trace of fox terrier. He got the name because he like to nip the back of peoples legs, like puppies do. His first owner, Mark Barraud, died in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool by Mark's younger brother, Francis, who was a struggling painter.
In Liverpool, Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud "often noticed how puzzled he was to try to figure out where the voice came from." Barraud commited this scene to memory, because it wasn't until three years after Nipper died, September of 1895, that he painted the scene of Nipper trying to make out where the sounds were originating from.
In 1898 Barraud completed the painting and registered it on 11 February 1899 as 'Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph.'
Barraud then decided to rename the painting 'His Master's Voice' and tried to exhibit it at the Royal Academy, but was turned down. He had no more luck trying to offer it for reproduction in magazines. "No one would know what the dog was doing" was given as the reason!
Next on Barraud's list was The Edison Bell Company, leading manufacturer of the cylinder phonograph, but again without success. "Dogs don't listen to phonographs," the company said.
Barraud was given the advise to repaint the horn from black to gold, as this might better his opportunity for a sale. With this in mind, in the summer of 1899 he visited 31 Maiden Lane, home of the newly formed Gramophone Company, with a photograph of his painting and a request to borrow a brass horn.
This painting made its first public appearance on The Gramophone Company's advertising literature in January 1900, and later on some novelty promotional items. However, 'His Master's Voice' did not feature on the Company's British letter headings until 1907. The painting and title were finally registered as a trademark in 1910.
It was also in 1900 that a seemingly innocuous request led to the eventual disappearance of 'His Master's Voice' as a label trademark. Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone, asked Barry Owen to assign him the copyright of 'His Master's Voice' for America. Owen agreed, as he did in 1904 to a similar request from Japan. Some eighty years later, when the arrival of the Compact Disc prompted record companies to start manufacturing centrally for the world, EMI paid the price of losing its rights in these two vital territories - and EMI Classics was created as a successor to 'His Master's Voice'.