the early 1920s, which provided unlimited free entertainment in the home, had a detrimental effect on the American phonograph record industry. The Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, was then the world's largest manufacturer of records and phonographs, including its popular showcase "Victrola" line. In January 1929, RCA purchased the Victor Company; this acquisition became known as the RCA Victor division of the Radio Corporation of America, and included ownership of Victor's Japanese subsidiary, the Victor Company of Japan (JVC), formed in 1927 and controlling interest in The Gramophone Company Ltd. (later EMI Records) in England. RCA's acquisition of Victor included the western hemisphere rights to the famous Nipper/"His Master's Voice" trademark. RCA Victor popularized combined radio receiver-phonographs, and also created RCA Photophone, a movie sound-on-film system that competed with William Fox's sound-on-film Movietone and Warner Bros.' sound-on-disc Vitaphone. Although early announcements of the RCA and Victor merger stressed that the two firms were linking on equal terms to form a joint new company, RCA initially had little true interest in the phonograph record business. The management of RCA was interested essentially in Victor's superior sales capabilities through the record company's well-organized network of authorized distributors and dealers and extensive, efficient manufacturing facilities in Camden, New Jersey. Immediately following the purchase of Victor, RCA began planning the manufacture of radio sets and components on Victor's Camden assembly lines, while decreasing the production of Victrolas and records. The entire phonograph record industry in America nearly foundered after the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression. During the nadir of the record business in the early 1930s, the manufacture of phonographs and records all but ceased; extant older phonographs were now obsolete and many had been relegated to the attic or basement. RCA Victor began selling the first all-electric Victrola in 1930 and in 1931 the company attempted to revitalize record sales with the introduction of 33 revolutions-per-minute (rpm) long play records, which were a commercial failure during the Great Depression, partly because the Victrolas with two speed turntables required to play them were exorbitantly expensive, and also because the audio performance of the new records was generally poor; the new format used the same groove size as existing 78 rpm records, and it would require the smaller-radius stylus of the later microgroove systems to achieve acceptable slower-speed performance. Additionally, the new long-play records were pressed in a