The early sales and rentals of phonographs and graphophones were pretty dismal, despite a great deal of enthusiasm for the technology. Amid much patent bickering, licensing, and corporate maneuvering, a network of regional companies authorized to make and/or service sound recorders emerged in the United States. By 1900 these companies were already struggling. However, at about this time the entertainment uses of the phonograph were emerging. In the ‘teens and twenties, the entertainment phonograph industry would explode. But the phonograph in the form of a business machine remained. Just two companies in the US dominated the business phonograph market. The first was the descendant of the company that Chichester Bell and Tainter formed in the District of Columbia to manufacture and sell the graphophone. Eventually, this became the Columbia Graphophone Company. Meanwhile, Edison’s “Improved Phonograph” became the basis of the business recorder made by Thomas A. Edison Inc. By about 1907, Columbia was calling its product the Dictaphone. Edison eventually renamed his product the Ediphone. Dictaphones and Ediphones were very similar in many ways, so choosing one or the other was largely a matter of taste and cost. The market for business phonographs was always much smaller than that for the entertainment phonograph, but because of the high initial cost of the business recorder and the constant need for supplies and repairs, the business was profitable.