Camden Electronics: New Berlin Museum Preserves RCA History

A museum dedicated to the history of RCA-Victor opened in Berlin, New Jersey, located just miles from its founding site in Camden.

The Victor Museum traces the company's timeline from the 1890s invention of the Victrola to the collapse of the RCA corporation in the 1980s. The facility occupies a former office building on White Horse Pike.

Graham Alexander, who acquired the rights to the Victor Talking Machine Company name ten years ago, has expanded his holdings in the region. He previously established the Victor Vault, a performance venue, a recording studio, and a record label under the century-old brand. Alexander stated that the brand's history is often overlooked, noting that the modern recording industry originated in Camden in the 1890s.

The collection includes dozens of original solid-wood consoles housing turntables, radios, and televisions. Richard Reindl, an RCA engineer who worked in Camden from 1973 to 2013, helped relocate the items. Many pieces came from the RCA Heritage Program Museum at Rowan University. The university renovated its Campbell Library for $23.4 million, a project that displaced the heritage program.

Reindl explained that university officials asked the program to downsize its facility to 10% to 15% of its original space. The group decided to move the collection to Berlin instead. The Berlin site joins two other regional repositories: the Johnson Victrola Museum in Dover, Delaware, and the Sarnoff Collection at The College of New Jersey in Ewing.

The museum displays artifacts ranging from 1930s electric pianos to 1940s televisions with 10-inch screens. It also features RCA technology used in 1970s satellites. The collection highlights the 1981 release of SelectaVision, a vinyl disc system that played movies in color and stereo. Despite extensive research and development, the format failed to compete with Japanese VHS tapes. This failure contributed to RCA's vulnerability, leading to a takeover by General Electric in 1986.

The museum also houses the original 15-foot stained-glass window of Nipper, the terrier mascot. RCA replaced the window with a red block font logo in 1969 and installed plaques in factories to inform employees of the change. Alexander owns one of the original plaques. He also acquired the remains of the real Nipper dog in 2022 and re-interred them in front of the museum, where a statue and memorial plaque now stand.