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We searched on "RCA dog" and turned up a bone in the Yahoo! Directory. It turns out the furry fellow in the popular RCA ads is named Nipper and is the proud owner of his very own category. At Nipperscape, one of the sites in the category, we did a little digging and learned the original Nipper was a mutt from Bristol, England. Born in 1884, he was part Bull
Terrier and part Fox Terrier. Francis Barraud, one of Nipper's human friends, painted a picture of the canine listening to a phonograph, ear cocked attentively. Barraud shopped the painting around and eventually sold it to the Gramophone Company of London (after painting in the company's disc gramophone in place of the cylinder version originally depicted). The painting, named "His Master's Voice," graced the walls of the Gramophone Company and became their trademark. Later, Emile Berliner, inventor of the disc gramophone, gained the rights to use it in the United States and Canada, and the image became the trademark of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and eventually, RCA. In the 1991, Nipper's junior companion, Chipper, a Jack Russell Terrier, joined the family.
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