Casa Edison Fred Figner

Fred Figner was a Czech-Jewish emigrant, who lived in the United States and landed in Belém, Brazil in 1891. He travelled to many regions of Brazil doing public exhibitions of Edison's phonograph. Nine years later Figner settled down in Rio de Janeiro, where in 1900 he established with his brother Gustavo Figner the Casa Edison, the first record & phonograph store in Brazil that sold imported Edison Phonographs and his record cylinders.

In 1902 it received a recording tour from Disco Zon-O-Phone and pressed in .

In 1906 Casa Edison enters a deal, or franchises, with International Talking Machine Co. m.b.H. for the pressing of Brazilian recordings, becoming the first Latin American country with dedicated recording studios. Such records are pressed in the Odeon factories of and Barcelona.

Casa Edison expands into São Paulo, franchise managed by Figner's brother Gustavo Figner. However the brothers have a falling out and Casa Edison, São Paulo becomes independent in 1914

In 1913 Figner, representing Odeon, builds the first latin american record factory in Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro, creating Brazilian the record company Fábrica Odeon.

In 1914, Fred Figner enters a deal with Casa Hartfield of Porto Alegre upon finding of the construction of Casa Faulhaber & Co. over patent rights. The result of the action is unknown, but the outcome is Faulhaber's retirement from the music industry.

In 1915 Fred Figner initiates a lawsuit with Saverio Leonetti over the publication of , a song recorded in Rio de Janeiro in 1912 and recorded and published by Leonetti in 1914. The lawsuit lasts from 1915 to 1920 and ends in settlement, but the legal pressure prompted Leonetti to withdraw from the Brazilian record market.