Fisher's Fonts

[TheRed1]

Avery Fisher loved typography. “Looking at a beautiful typographical design,” he told an interviewer in 1976, is like listening to music.” His first job in the early 1930s was at an advertising agency that catered to book publishers. In 1932 he went to work for one of those companies, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. A year later he was with Dodd, Mead and Company as a graphic designer. He continued to work for them throughout the 1930s while, in his spare time, he began tinkering with radios and amplifiers. In fact, he didn't quit his day job - so to speak - and continued with Dodd the entire time he was building up his first company, Philharmonic Radio Co. He finally resigned in 1943 but would occasionally undertake high-profile book designing projects that interested him, donating the proceeds to charity.

A February 1956 profile of Avery Fisher in the NY Times mentioned that he, “...writes every line of the instruction material and other printed matter, and designs the type layouts, just as he did in the old days when his product was a book.” So, as part of Fisher’s 75th Anniversary celebrations, I thought it might be interesting to look back at the evolution of Mr. Fisher’s typographical design aesthetics.

So what font is your Fisher? I would love to see more especially if I don't have an example posted below. These are a few of mine and some other notable examples that I've collected. (I used to think you could date Fishers by their font or whether or not they were 'The Fisher' 'Fisher' 'By Fisher' etc. - but there are so many exceptions to the general trends that it really doesn't work very well.)

1937-1942 Philharmonic Radio Company

1937 Philharmonic Futura (Courtesy the Smithsonian Museum of American History)

1939-40? Philharmonic Linear Standard (Courtesy Al Germond)

1941 Philharmonic Futura K-1

1945 - 1969 Fisher Radio Corporation

1946-47? Fisher S-1/S-2/K-2?

1947 Fisher 24B "Anniversary Model"

1948 Fisher SA-1

1950-51? Fisher Coronet R-3

1958 Fisher 500

1959 Fisher Contemporary II

1959 Fisher Stereo Companion 560

1960 Custom Electra III

 

[tube-a-lou]

Having a Fisher the name always seems to stand out,

THE FISHER

that was there great marketing tool I guess and it's worked.

Tube

 

[larryderouin]

Great Historical Note, Carter. You must be bored outta your skull if you're hunting font's that Avery used on the gear.

Larry

 

[Jailtime]

I've always found the various Fisher fonts interesting. That '59 Contemporary II is about as good as it gets for dial glasses. And the badge on the Stereo Companion is just beautiful.

 

[Danimal]

As a printer, my whole adult life, I really appreciate this thread. You did a great job documenting the progression of his use of fonts throughout the years. I know, you don't have to say it... I'm a geek.

 

[larryderouin]

I've always found the various Fisher fonts interesting. That '59 Contemporary II is about as good as it gets for dial glasses. And the badge on the Stereo Companion is just beautiful.

The badge is on the Contemporary. The Stereo companion is the bottom edge decal. It's sitting about 4 ft away from me right now.

 

[Jailtime]

The badge is on the Contemporary. The Stereo companion is the bottom edge decal. It's sitting about 4 ft away from me right now.

Oh yeah, oops. I should have known that, I've seen that console around this forum a hundred times.

 

[larryderouin]

Yeah it has had it's share of exposure/porn, hasn't it.

 

[JBL GUY]

Thanks for the nice post.

Very interesting and it is to have the information in one place.

I printed it to PDF for future reference.

 

[Sam Cogley]

The standard C800 Contemporary used the same badge without the "Stereophonic" addition. I have yet to see an R20 receiver, even in a C800, without the "Medalist II" markings on the glass. I used a razor blade to remove them on mine, I think it looks cleaner.

 

[TheRed1]

The Convoluted Saga Of Philharmonic Trademark #432,209

Note: this post is intended only for a very few of the most rabid, hardcore Fisher fanatics and contains some extremely esoteric and obscure Fisher facts which some of the less dedicated collectors may find disturbing and/or extremely boring. Viewer discretion advised.

I have been searching for the source of this obscure bit of Fisher trivia for months. I knew I had read somewhere that Avery Fisher had, at some point, repurchased the Philharmonic name he sold in 1943. Tonight it finally turned up but it doesn't fit my chronology at all. The source turns out to be an article by Martin Mayer that appeared in the Oct. 1962 issue of High Fidelity magazine titled, 'The Business That Did Not Exist', which is probably the most comprehensive history of both of Avery Fisher's companies, Philharmonic Radio Co. and Fisher Radio Corp.

Two separate trademarks were registered for Philharmonic: the first, #432,209, was filed in 1944 after Avery Fisher had sold the company but while he was still acting as president; and second, #433,102, which was filed in 1946 after Mr. Fisher had severed ties with what had become the Philharmonic Radio Corporation, a subsidiary of American Type Founders, Inc. The former registration is the only one for which there is a history of its subsequent assignments. I presume that both registrations were consolidated under the original and treated as a single entity.

The unusually long delay between the original filing date and the eventual registration of trademark #432,209 was the result of an opposition filed by E. H. Scott who thought they had a pretty good claim to ownership of the Philharmonic name. Scott probably was the first to use the name by a very small margin (months) but they had not used it while engaged in war production during WWII. Philharmonic, on the other hand, had continued to use their name on their hush-hush work for such agencies as the OSS and MIT's Rad Lab. The courts ruled that Scott had abandoned the mark, canceling their registration and awarding it to the Philharmonic Radio Corp.

Now bear in mind that this has absolutely nothing to do with Avery Fisher at this point: the Philharmonic Radio Corp., (Nathan Pinsley, President), a division of American Type Founders, Inc., (Thomas R. Jones, President), appears to have appropriated the logo used on E. H. Scott's flagship Philharmonic model virtually unaltered, viz.:

What I find exceedingly confusing is John Meck Industries, (which I believe was some sort of holding company that ended up controlling the E. H. Scott brand) appears to have been connected in some way with the post-war, post-Avery Fisher Philharmonic. They made a joint attempt to acquire Wilcox-Gray that was inexplicably abandoned.

At some point in the early 50s, the Philharmonic Radio Corp. morphed into the Philharmonic Radio And Television Corp. to which the trademark #432,209 "together with the good will" (or what was left of it) was eventually assigned in Jan. 1961. It is my observation that the records of the transfers of trademark ownership often lag well behind actual corporate usage. For instance, in Sept. 1961 the Symphonic Radio and Electronic Corporation announced that it was producing a new line of cheap portable phonographs and consoles under the "Philharmonic" label for Columbia Records. The actual transfer of the trademark isn't recorded until 1967.

Also in 1967, Symphonic amended both Philharmonic trademarks from their original and interesting Avery Fisher fonts to a rather boring block letter version:

While perhaps coincidental, the Symphonic trademark (which was filed for in 1946 but took until 1950 to be registered - possible opposition?) has a similar image of a maestro/conductor to Philharmonic's:

In 1973 Trademark #432,209 is transferred (with a bit of an ironic twist) to Morse Electro Products Corp. which was then contemplating a marketing campaign to compete head-on with Fisher in the high-end of the audio market with its Electrophonic line. Witness their final choice of brand name:

After Morse was through tarnishing the name 'Philharmonic', the trademark disappeared down a rabbit hole of baffling transfers and name changes all recorded on Oct. 25, 1973 . . . and all in the meat-packing industry!?!? Your guess is as good as mine. This is the sequence:

Needham Packing Company, Inc.
Flavorland Industries, Inc.
Wilson-Sinclair Co.
Wilson & Co., Inc. - Oklahoma City, OK

I think that last company was formed as the result of a consolidation of some or all of the above. Ultimately, though, Wilson & Co., Inc. was just another subsidiary of the LTV Corporation.

Now here's the crazy part: the next recorded transfer of ownership takes place in 1976. Somehow, between Oct. 25, 1973 and Jan. 7, 1976 the Philharmonic name mysteriously (with no recorded transfer) came under the control of the Emerson Electric Co. and was then being transferred to - you guessed it - Fisher Corporation. (Not The Fisher Corporation, mind you, but the Sanyo controlled, Delaware corporate descendant of the same.) Of course Fisher had been putting the little circled 'R' after the console model Philharmonic since Aug. 1972 but, as I mentioned above, the registration of trademarks tended to lag behind actual real world usage.

However, that fact can't possibly account for the discrepancy between Martin Mayer's mentioning in 1962 that Avery Fisher had repurchased the Philharmonic name of which there is no evidence until a full decade later. Maybe Avery Fisher mentioned that he wanted to repurchase the name and Mr. Mayer misunderstood - I have no idea.

 

[larryderouin]

A circle Jerk on too many levels of buerocracy(sp?). I was reaching for the APC's after the 1st paragraph!

GOOD Research. Another piece or pieces of the puzzle.

Larry

 

[Sam Cogley]

Don't forget Altec's use of a very similar maestro...and yet another tie to that all-pervasive LTV. They were like the real-world embodiment of the "All your base are belong to us" joke.

 

[the_nines]

Great Historical Note, Carter. You must be bored outta your skull if you're hunting font's that Avery used on the gear.

Larry

:lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao:

 

[Torinoman72]

Was just given a 447 ! Looks pretty cool , have not listened yet , speaker terminals are RCAs ? Great info ... Thank you .

 

[TheRed1]

You probably don't want to get me started on the whole Philharmonic trademark imbroglio again - especially now that I've had a chance to go through Avery Fisher's personal files on the subject. He saved everything related to his court battles with the evil New Jersey Philharmonic Corporation. There were fat, fat files with hundreds of pages of court documents and letters to and from his lawyers. It gives me a headache just thinking about what a headache it must have been for Mr. Fisher to have had to deal with those shysters - and the lawsuits dragged on for years and years. What a nightmare!

Admittedly, my perspective is heavily slanted in Fisher's favor. Almost all of the documentation I have access to presents his side of the story. Even so - making allowances for the one-sided nature of my research - it strikes me as a clear-cut case of the courts being used as weapon, dragging out the proceedings with persistent nuisance motions. I suspect the reason Avery Fisher continued the battle (and eventually triumphed) was as a matter of principle and a point of pride. He certainly had very little to gain beyond returning the Philharmonic name to its rightful place under the Fisher corporate banner. He had sold the company by the time the case was finally settled but it still bore his name. And Philharmonic was rightfully his.

Getting back to your Morse "Philharmonic" 447 . . . just to clarify and not meaning to denigrate . . . you do understand that it is representative of the karmic "bad guys" in this story, right? Not that Morse was, itself, an evil corporation - just that it was the recipient of tainted goods in the form of the probably-illegal Philharmonic trademark assignment. Whether or not Morse knew the background of the Philharmonic name, I can't say.

 

[michaelj12]

I think it's interesting that two of the biggest pioneers in what we consider the golden age of hi fi design, Fisher and Marantz, were both graphic designers, and had an unusual appreciation for the power of fine typography as well as industrial design.

It seems that Fisher influenced the typography on the early Marantz amps and pre amps, as they both used Futura to call out functions and specs in silk screen and in print. Later Marantz switched to a version of Metropolis to label everything, and though I accept it as integral to the look and feel of all those 70s receivers and amps, certainly a degree of elegance and simplicity of design was lost when that type was chosen--but then again, that was emblematic of a great deal of design in the 70s anyway.