Thanks for this Mike. I don't recall seeing the Wheeler book reviewed in the Journal. Can you tell us more about it? In that it carries a $95 price tag your assessment of its research value would be appreciated by all of us. Sam On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Michael Biel <[log in to unmask]> wrote: --SNIP-- > There is no evidence that Western Electric ever showed their system to > either Victor or Columbia before Nov or Dec 1924. It certainly would > have been mentioned in the Hewitt lab notebooks. Columbia signed the > contract with Western Electric on Feb 26, 1925 -- and this contract has > just been published in facsimile by *Geoffrey Wheeler in his new book > about the legal (and illegal) history of Columbia Records.* It looks > like four masters by Art Gillham beat the contract by a day, but he did