My friend and colleague Paul Grondahl wrote a wonderful story last week in the TU about Albany's 'Owney,' the stray Scottish terrier and post office mascot who rode the mail trains and boats around the world.

Albany has another canine mascot that towers above Owney - at least in size. If you haven't noticed that large dog sitting on top of a downtown Broadway building, well you simply don't see very well. Nipper may just be a bit more famous than Owney!

Nipper is best known as the advertising trademark, "RCA Dog," but he started as a real mutt in Bristol, England, as part bull terrier and fox terrier.

Nipper was a stray in Bristol, England, and rescued in 1884, by Mark Barraud, a Bristol theater stage set painter. When he died in 1887, his brother, photographer and painter Francis Barraud, adopted the small mutt (named for his attraction to nip people's ankles). Francis often noticed that when he was listening to his Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph (yes kids, way before digital CDs), he noticed the mutt was listening with his head cocked trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. He thought perhaps Nipper was trying to listen for his first owner's voice.

Nipper was eventually given to his brother's widow and the dog died in 1895. Remembering the image of Nipper and the phonograph, Francis decided to paint the image. It was finished on February 11, 1899 and he titled it "Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph." It was later changed to "His Master's Voice."

Inspired by his painting, he took it to Edison-Bell and offered to sell it but a company spokesman complained that dogs didn't listen to phonographs and the painting was too dark. He visited a new company called Gramophone in London's Maiden Lane to borrow a new bright brass horn and include the lighter horn in the painting. After showing the painting to the manager, Barry Owen, Owen asked Francis if he could redo the picture with their Gramophone instead of the Edison version. He took the new Berliner "Improved Gramophone" and painted it on top of the existing one. Owen offered him 100 pounds ($167): 50 pounds for the painting and the other 50 pounds for the copyright. In England, the trademark was called "Dog and Trumpet."

By the time Barraud died on August 29, 1924, he had been commissioned to make 24 more copies of the painting.

Emile Berliner used the painting as his logo in the United States, and when Eldridge Johnson, who formed the Victor Talking Machine Company, acquired his company, Nipper would become the most famous dog in the world. Johnson received a US patent for "His Master's Voice" instead of "Dog and Trumpet" on July 10, 1909, and it came to represent RCA Victor for years. RCA purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929; however, RCA tossed the Nipper logo in the 60's for a new look.

In the merger mania years of the 1980's, General Electric bought the RCA Victor Company (they owned RCA before 1932 but sold it) and sold the home entertainment division to Thomson Consumer Electronics. Thomson decided to introduce a new trademark, Nipper and his younger companion, Chipper, a Jack Russell terrier, in 1991. Unfortunately for them, they have to keep replacing Chipper since the dogs keep growing up.

The current living Nipper has his own Limo. The first Nipper has a plaque on his grave.

Albany's 4 ton, 25 foot high Nipper created out of fiberglass composite over a steel mesh frame supported by ironwork was erected in 1954 with horn and box on 991 Broadway. Only Nipper remains today. Other RCA distributors had Nippers on top, but Albany's is the largest and may be the lone survivor. Fortunately, the current owner of the building, Arnoff Moving and Storage Building, has recognized the landmark and is leaving it in place. In fact, it has become a new trademark of sorts with Arnoff using the slogan "The watchdog of your possessions."

There is more to the story. Our Nipper has a part of history no other Nipper has. He sits and looks over the intersection of Broadway and the beginning of Niskayuna Road. This is the same winding road that runs northwest up to old Niskayuna to the end of Burhmaster Road on the Mohawk River.

It is the road in which Simon Schermerhorn rode on February 8, 1690, into Albany's North Gate at 5 AM to warn Albanians of the Schenectady Massacre and impending attack on Albany.

I would bet that if Nipper had been sitting at Schenectady's gate, the French and Indians might have thought otherwise.