Who is Nipper?
In 1884, Nipper, a fox terrier mix was born in England. Nipper had the tendency to “nip” at people’s legs, giving him his name. Mark Barraud was Nipper’s original owner. When he passed away, Francis, Mark’s younger brother, took Nipper to live with him. In 1895, Nipper passed away. In 1899, Francis, an artist by trade, found inspiration for a painting from a photograph of Nipper looking in to a bell cylinder of a phonograph playing. Nipper’s Camden Connection E. R. Johnson was working in Camden as a machinist when Emile Berliner asked him to create a spring motor enabling discs to play on a gramophone at a continuous speed. A motor would eliminate the need to crank a gramophone by hand. Johnson’s spring motor was very successful and, in 1901, Johnson, who held many patents for the Berliner Company formed the Victor Talking Machine Company. The image of a dog listening to “His Master’s Voice” was included in the merger with Berliner and Johnson continued using the image of Nipper on all
