The story
The American Record Company (commonly abbreviated as "ARCo") was founded by Ellsworth A. Hawthorne and Horace Sheble, formerly designers of accessories for Edison Records machines at their Philadelphia-based bicycle shop; in a previous venture, they had issued a small run of brown-wax cylinders in the mid-1890s. Hawthorne and Sheble partnered with John O. Prescott, whose brother Frederick worked with International Talking Machine in Berlin, which marketed Odeon Records. The new company was based in Springfield, Massachusetts, though they maintained factories in Bridgeport, CT and Philadelphia; recordings were made in a studio in New York City. American principally produced single-sided, lateral-cut disc records on blue shellac, although two-sided issues and standard, black shellac appeared towards the end of the company's run.
From Wikipedia’s article on American Record Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3