Everyone knows Thomas Edison invented the first wax-cylinder phonograph in 1877. Fewer remember Emile Berliner invented the recording industry when he patented the flat, gramophone record disc in 1887.
Or, that Berliner was an adoptive Montrealer, settling in Saint-Henri, where he built North America’s first record pressing plant in 1899 and continued to expand as Gramophone merged with RCA Victor.
In 1900, he opened a Berliner Gram-O-Phone store on Ste-Catherine St. on the same block where the Montreal Forum later stood. Likely, among the world’s first true record stores.
Today, Mar. 1, 2022, Sherbrooke’s oldest independent record store announced it will soon be closing.
“The end of a great epic,” Jean-François Ouimet declared on Facebook. The Musique Cité owner, since 2015, urged readers to read, “Every sentence, every word, to fully understand.”
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