Today in 1900, Emile Berliner, inventor of the Gramophone, registered “His Master’s Voice” as a trademark with the U.S. Patent Office.
The logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company (later, RCA Victor), originally a 1898 painting by Francis Barraud, showed Nipper, a Bristol, UK, dog who was named so because he would often “nip” at the backs of visitors’ legs, listening intently to an Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph. Barraud recalled:
It is difficult to say how the idea came to me beyond the fact that it suddenly occurred to me that to have my dog listening to the phonograph, with an intelligent and rather puzzled expression, and call it 'His Master's Voice' would make an excellent subject. We had a phonograph and I often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from. It certainly was the happiest thought I ever had.
When Gramophone Company founder and manager William Barry Owen was shown the painting, he suggested that if the artist painted out the cylinder machine and replaced it with a Berliner disc gramophone, he would buy the painting. The slogan "His Master's Voice", along with the painting, was sold to the Gramophone Company for £100.