Berliner, E
Berliner, Emile
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Phonograph record
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: May 20, 1851, Hanover, Germany
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: August, 3, 1929, Washington, D.C. Aged 78
DISCIPLINE: Inventor
FIELD: Telecommunications
LANGUAGE: German, English
PARENTS: Samuel M. Berliner; Sarah Friedman
SIBLINGS: 10
SPOUSE: Cora Adler
CHILDREN: Herbert, Hannah, Edgar, Louise, Henry, Alice
EDUCATION: Samson School, Wolfenbuttel, Germany.
MAJOR WORK: Phonograph Record Disk
LIFE AND TIMES:
Shortly before his 19th birthday, Berliner emigrated to the United States and went to live in Washington DC, where he worked for three years in a dry-goods store owned by Nathan Gotthelf, a family friend. He left this job in 1873 and spent the next three years drifting from one job to another, ending up in New York, where he took a job in the
laboratory of Constantine Fahlberg (who later discovered saccharin).
In 1876 Berliner returned to Washington, where again he worked in dry goods, but by now his heart was set on invention. It was the year that Alexander Graham Bell* invented his telephone, which intrigued Berliner since he had already done considerable research into electrical communication.
He set up an electrical laboratory in his boarding house, and discovered that a telegraph key pressed hard would send a stronger current through the wires than if the contact were loose. From this he deduced that variations in a battery current could be produced by variations in contact pressure.
Berliner developed a telephone transmitter that overcame the main defect of Bell's instrument. Bell had used the voice to induce a weak undulating current. Berliner used the voice to impose undulations upon a strong current already produced by a battery. The result was greater volume and clarity of sound in the receiver, and an immense increase in the distance of communication. In 1877 Berliner filed for a patent for this invention, which became known as the microphone.
In 1877, Berliner took his model to Bell. His timing could not have been
better. Edison* had also invented an improved telephone transmitter and had sold it to Bell's biggest competitor. Bell paid him a large sum for his
transmitter, which also acted as a superior telephone receiver, and put
him on a monthly retainer. For three years, until 1881, he worked on improving his transmitter.
Berliner next became interested in the phonautograph (or sound writer) invented
in 1857 by Martinville*, a French amateur scientist. It was an instrument using a stylus mounted on a vibrating membrane to trace a visual record of sound vibrations on lamp-blacked paper. By the time Berliner became involved, it had been relegated to a Washington museum.
The aspect of the phonautograph that attracted Berliner was its laterally moving stylus. He reasoned that if he could develop a talking machine employing a zigzag system of recording instead of the vertical "hill-and-dale" system (as on the cylinder then in use), there would be less distortion caused by gravity, and he would then have a patentable invention differing in essential particulars from Edison's phonograph.
Berliner's first step was to cover a flat disk of heavy plate glass with lampblack, set it revolving on a turntable in contact with a stylus, then mount the stylus on a feed screw so that it would create a spiral pattern on the disk, moving across the disk horizontally. When actuated by sound waves, the stylus vibrated laterally, and left a visual trace on the lamp-blacked disk.
Berliner "fixed" this delicate tracing with varnish and had the record photo-engraved in metal. When this photo-engraved record was played back through a stylus-and-membrane reproducer, the original sounds were re-created well enough for Berliner to apply for his first patent in September, 1887, 10 years after Edison's tin-foil phonograph.
To differentiate his invention from its predecessors, Berliner named it the "gramophone", referring specifically to a talking machine employing lateral-cut disks.
In the winter of 1887-88, Berliner started to work on the possibility of engraving a gramophone record by chemical action. He proposed coating a zinc disk with some workable substance, inscribing a recording on that surface, and then immersing the disk in an acid bath. The acid would eat away the metal where the recording stylus had made its tracings, leaving a thin shallow groove of even depth etched into the zinc.
It took several months of experimentation to find a suitable coating, but at last he developed a method of coating the zinc disk with a thin fatty film that responded to the stylus but was impervious to the acid.
In March, 1888, he invited local musicians to perform into the recording horn. In May he demonstrated his gramophone record before appreciative members of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Berliner now attacked the problems of duplication. He developed a system by which many records could be made from one master disk by means of a nickel-plated reverse copper matrix, made from the original acid-etched recording, and then using this "negative" matrix to stamp "positive" records in some suitable material. After some experimentation, he chose a durable shellac composition.
By 1893, Berliner felt that the gramophone was ready for commercial exploitation in the United States. He was at last able to produce an adequate stamping matrix, and had found what he thought was a suitable record material in hard rubber. With a few friends and relatives, Berliner formed the United States Gramophone Co.
Needing a talent scout, Berliner hired 21-year-old Fred Gaisberg, who had worked for the Columbia Phonograph Co., and Gaisberg persuaded several experienced artists to come to Washington to record. (Eight years later, he hired tenor Caruso* to record in Milan.)
In late 1894, the first records went on sale at 50 cents each, or $5.00 a dozen. In 1895, a syndicate of Philadelphia investors put up $25,000, and from this the Berliner Gramophone Co. was established. With the addition of a workable wind-up spring motor, invented by Eldridge Johnson, the gramophone beat out the phonograph, and Berliner's fortune was made.
In 1908, Berliner began some aeronautical experiments, and designed a
lightweight revolving cylinder internal-combustion motor that became a
widely imitated prototype for aircraft.
Under his supervision, his son, Henry A. Berliner, designed a helicopter that flew successfully in 1919. In 1925, the elder Berliner invented an acoustic tile for use in
auditoriums. He died at home in Washington from a cerebral hemorrhage.
ASSESSMENT: Through sheer determination, vision, and self-confidence,
Berliner was able to rise from being an obscure amateur to become one of
the foremost inventors of his time
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Emile Berliner, inventor of the microphone and gramophone record
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB, ANB
Gelatt, Roland, The Fabulous Phonograph, 1877-1977, London: Cassell, 1977