Chicago-based US company that began producing phonograph cabinets in 1913 and then their own phonograph brand between 1916 to 1931, and records from 1920-1931.
Originally founded in 1845 by Swiss immigrant John Brunswick in Cincinnati, Ohio as a producer of carriages, then tables, chairs, and cabinets. The company soon moved to Chicago, Illinois, however, and switched its focus to become an important producer of billiard tables. By 1878, it had merged with two rivals to form the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, the largest producer of billiards equipment in the world. In the 1890s, the company expanded further to build wooden bar counters for saloons and bowling equipment. In 1907, the company reincorporated in Delaware.
Around 1913, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company began building phonograph cabinets for other manufacturers. In August 1916, the company formed a temporary alliance with the Pathé Frères Phonograph Co. to build Brunswick-Pathéphone phonographs while staying out of the record business in the United States. In Canada, however, the company's Canadian issued 100 vertically-cut (Pathé-type) records in 1917, but that enterprise was soon scuttled.
In the United States, Brunswick-Balke-Collender released its first lateral-cut records under the Brunswick name in January 1920. Recordings were made in Brunswick's own studios in New York City and pressed in Long Island City and northern New York State; additional pressing plants were being built in Jersey City and Toronto, Canada. By 1923, Brunswick was the third-largest record producer in the United States and erected a new pressing plant in Muskegon, Michigan with a daily output of 200,000 records. In February 1923, the company abandoned the common strategy of releasing new records once a month. It still released a monthly list of new records, but released new records "practically every day," according to an announcement in that month's "Talking Machine World." In the summer of 1923, the company also sent the first team with portable recording equipment to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle to record popular West Coast bands.
In 1924, Brunswick opened a The Aeolian Company. In 1925, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
In April 1925, the company began to experiment with electrical recordings in its New York studio. West Coast recordings continued to be done as acoustical field recordings until a permanent electrical recording studio was set up in Los Angeles in December 1927 (its recordings received the matrix prefix LAE). In 1925, Brunswick also introduced a new record player, the Panatrope, to play its "New Process" discs.
In 1926, Brunswick appointed Vocalion (2) label.
In December 1926, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company announced a matrix-sharing agreement with the Brunswick recordings were released on a special green Brunswick export label in .
In 1928, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company began producing its own radios. Record sales reached a peak of $29 million.
In November 1929, a Brunswick expedition made field recordings in Canton, China and in Manila in the Philippines. The resulting records were pressed in the United States and re-exported to China and the Philippines for sale.
On October 28, 1929, however, the U.S. stock market collapsed, creating serious problems for a company that depended on discretionary consumer spending. The firm was suddenly saddled with $9 million in debt. On April 9, 1930 Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold its radio, phonograph, and records division for $10 million to American Record Corporation.
