Louis Valiquet patented many unusual devices after leaving Zonophone, including the Photophone (a phonograph-projector combination that was unrelated to RCA’s later, identically named system) and this unusual sounding-board replacement for the phonograph horn. Valiquet had exhibited a prototype in 1909, and the June 1910 Talking Machine World announced the impending commercial launch. Ads, like this one picturing the device with its optional “special ornamentation” in place, began running in the Autumn of 1910.
Valiquet’s device, marketed as The Resonator, was distributed by the Soundboard Company of New York. Like so many other novelty horns and horn replacements, it arrived on the scene just as the new inside-horn phonographs were gaining in popularity, and the company seems to have disappeared in 1911.
