I wrote the following column back on October 7, 2003. That’s 23 years ago. Let me share most of it with some updates.

If you haven’t noticed that large dog sitting on top of a downtown Broadway building, you simply don’t see very well.

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 was 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 Feb. 11, 1899, and he titled it “Dog looking at and........

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