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INVENTORS HALL OF FAME

 

Berliner Patent Nos. 372,786 and 463,569 Gramophone; Combined Telegraph and Telephone

Born in Hanover, Germany, Emile Berliner came to Washington at age 19, around 1870. He studied physics at the Cooper Institute while assisting in a chemical laboratory. Most of the time, he functioned as a seller of consumer dry goods.

Later, when Bell demonstrated his telephone at the U.S. Centennial exposition, many inventors began exploring ways to improve it. Berliner's inspiration came when a telegraph operator told him that more current passed as one pressed harder on the key.

Berliner than invented the microphone that became part of the first Bell telephones, and his gramophone was the first record player to use disks. The carbon microphone transmitter he developed varied the contact pressure between two terminals as a voice acted against it.

Berliner, at age 25, sold his microphone patent for $50,000 to the fledgling Bell Telephone Company, paving the way for it to become one of the world's largest corporations. Berliner's gramophone differed from its contemporaries in that it used a flat disk to record sound rather than the cylinder proposed by Edison. The disk permitted inexpensive, mass duplication.

Berliner's gramophone and method for duplicating records were eventually acquired by the Victor Talking Machine Company. Berliner then founded Deutsche Grammophon and Britain's Gramophone Co., LTD. to market his device in Europe. His trademark, later adopted by RCA, was taken from an amusing painting from the turn of the century. The painting showed a dog, Nipper, listening to "his master's voice" on an old phonograph.

Other Berliner inventions included a helicopter which flew in 1919, and the first radial aircraft engine. He also formed a public health organization that helped safeguard the U.S. milk supply.

In 1911, he established the Esther Berliner (his mother) Fellowship to give qualified women the opportunity to continue scientific research.

The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.invent.org

      

         

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