Emile Berliner (born Emil Berliner; May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) was a German-American inventor and businessman who invented the lateral-cut flat disc record, also known as a "gramophone record," used with a gramophone. He founded the United States Gramophone Company in 1894.

Early life

Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851 into a Jewish merchant family. He completed an apprenticeship to become a merchant, as was family tradition. While his real hobby was invention, he worked as an accountant to make ends meet. To avoid being drafted in the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner migrated to the United States of America in 1870 with a friend of his father's, in whose shop he worked in Washington, D.C. He moved to New York and, living off temporary work such as a paper route and cleaning bottles, he studied physics at night at the Cooper Union Institute.

Career

After some time working in a livery stable, Berliner became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph. He invented an improved telephone transmitter, one of the first types of microphones. The patent was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company (see The Telephone Cases), but contested, in a long legal battle, by Thomas Edison. On February 27, 1901, the United States Court of Appeals would declare Berliner's patent void and awarded Edison full rights to the invention. "Edison preceded Berliner in the transmission of speech," the court would write. "The use of carbon in a transmitter is, beyond controversy, the invention of Edison".

Berliner moved to Boston in 1877, where he became a United States citizen four years later. He worked for Bell Telephone until 1883, when he returned to Washington and established himself as a private researcher.

Between 1907 and 1926, Berliner worked on technologies for vertical flight, including a lightweight rotary engine. Berliner obtained automobile engines from the Adams Company in Dubuque, Iowa, whose Adams-Farwell automobile used air-cooled three- or five-cylinder rotary engines developed in-house by Fay Oliver Farwell (1859–1935). Berliner, his assistant R.S. Moore, and Farwell developed a 36-hp rotary engine for use in helicopters, an innovation on the heavier inline engines then in use. On June 16, 1922, Berliner and his son, Henry, demonstrated a helicopter for the US Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics.

Henry became disillusioned with helicopters in 1925, and the company shut down. which merged to become Berliner-Joyce Aircraft in 1929.

Other

Berliner's other inventions include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth and an acoustic tile.

Berliner, who suffered a nervous breakdown in 1914, also advocated for improvements in public health and sanitation. and, in 1908, established a scholarship program, the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship, in honor of his mother.

Death

On August 3, 1929, Berliner died of a heart attack at his home at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., at the age of 78. He is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., alongside his wife and a son, Herbert Samuel Berliner.

Publications

Books

thumb|Emile Berliner with a [[veiled woman]]

  • See also .

Patents

thumb|Marker for the Berliner family in [[Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.]]

Patent images in Tag Image File Format

  • Telephone (induction coils), filed October 1877, issued January 1878
  • Telephone (carbon diaphragm microphone), filed August 1879, issued December 1879
  • Microphone (loose carbon rod), filed September 1879, issued February 1880
  • Microphone (spring carbon rod), filed Nov 1879, issued March 1880
  • UK Patent 15232 filed November 8, 1887
  • Gramophone (horizontal recording), original filed May 1887, refiled September 1887, issued November 8, 1887
  • Process of Producing Records of Sound (recorded on a thin wax coating over metal or glass surface, subsequently chemically etched), filed March 1888, issued May 1888
  • Combined Telegraph and Telephone (microphone), filed June 1877, issued November 1891
  • Sound Record and Method of Making Same (duplicate copies of flat, zinc disks by electroplating), filed March 1893, issued October 1895
  • Gramophone (recorded on underside of flat, transparent disk), filed November 7, 1887, issued July 1896

References

Further reading

  • Emile Berliner: Inventor of the Gramophone (Library of Congress)
  • Berliner – Inventor of the Gramophone and the "flat" record – Canadian Communication Foundation
  • and patent list
  • The Berliner helicopters at the National Air and Space Museum
  • Berliner helicopter at College Park, Maryland
  • Berliner in the Inventor's Hall of Fame
  • Illustrated Berliner page
  • Contents of Berliner's case file at The Franklin Institute contains evidence and correspondence with Berliner regarding the award of his 1929 Franklin Medal for acoustic engineering and development of the gramophone
  • Musée des ondes Emile Berliner in Montreal, Quebec contains over 30,000 recordings and other artifacts
  • Website Emil Berliner Studios in Berlin, Germany – The History of the Record by Peter K. Burkowitz (the other side)