Emile Berliner (born Emil Berliner; May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) was a German-American inventor and businessman. He created the lateral-cut flat disc record, also called a "gramophone record," which is used with a gramophone device. In 1894, he established the United States Gramophone Company.

Early life

Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851 to a Jewish merchant family. He completed an apprenticeship to learn the trade of a merchant, following family tradition. Although his true interest was in inventing, he worked as an accountant to earn money. To avoid being forced to join the military during the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner moved to the United States of America in 1870 with a friend of his father's. He worked in a shop in Washington, D.C., and later moved to New York. There, he took temporary jobs such as delivering newspapers and cleaning bottles to support himself while studying physics at night at the Cooper Union Institute.

Career

After working at a livery stable for a while, Berliner became interested in new audio technology, such as the telephone and phonograph. He invented an improved telephone transmitter, one of the first types of microphones. The patent was bought by the Bell Telephone Company, but Thomas Edison challenged it in a long legal battle. On February 27, 1901, the United States Court of Appeals decided that Berliner's patent was not valid and gave Edison full rights to the invention. The court wrote, "Edison used carbon in a transmitter before Berliner did. This use of carbon is clearly Edison's invention."

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

In 1890, a Berliner licensee in Germany was making a toy Gramophone and small hard rubber discs, but these items were sold only in Europe because key U.S. patents were still being processed. Berliner wanted his Gramophone to be more than a toy, so in 1894, he convinced a group of businessmen to invest $25,000 to start the United States Gramophone Company.

Berliner also developed a rotary engine and an early version of the helicopter. A July 1, 1909, report in The New York Times stated that a helicopter built by Berliner and J. Newton Williams of Derby, Connecticut, lifted Williams off the ground three times at Berliner's laboratory in Washington, D.C.

Between 1907 and 1926, Berliner worked on technologies for vertical flight, including a lightweight rotary engine. He used automobile engines from the Adams Company in Dubuque, Iowa, which had developed air-cooled rotary engines. Berliner, his assistant R.S. Moore, and Fay Oliver Farwell created a 36-hp rotary engine for use in helicopters, improving upon heavier engines used at the time.

In 1909, Berliner founded the Gyro Motor Company in Washington, D.C. The company's leaders included Berliner as president, Moore as designer and engineer, and Joseph Sanders as inventor, engineer, and manufacturer. Spencer Heath, a mechanical engineer connected to the American Propeller Manufacturing Company, managed the company. By 1910, Berliner was testing a vertically mounted tail rotor to balance torque on his single-main-rotor helicopter design, an idea that influenced practical helicopters in the 1940s. The building used for these operations still stands at 774 Girard Street NW, Washington, D.C., in the Fairmont-Girard alleyway. On June 16, 1922, Berliner and his son, Henry, demonstrated a helicopter to the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics.

Henry became disappointed with helicopters in 1925, and the company shut down. In 1926, Henry Berliner founded the Berliner Aircraft Company, which later merged to become Berliner-Joyce Aircraft in 1929.

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

Berliner suffered a nervous breakdown in 1914. He also supported improvements in public health and sanitation and advocated for women's equality. In 1908, he created the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship, a scholarship program honoring his mother.

Death

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

Publications

• Conclusions. New York: Kaufman Pub. Co. 1902. OCLC 875135708. ISBN 978-0-8370-2292-5
• The Milk Question and Mortality among Children Here and in Germany. Society for Prevention of Sickness. 1904. OCLC 1176430061.
• Some Neglected Essentials in the Fight against Consumption. Washington, D.C.: Society for the Prevention of Sickness. 1907. OCLC 786335332 – via Harvard Library Viewer.
• A Study Towards the Solution of Industrial Problems in the New Zionist Commonwealth (PDF). Washington, D.C.: N. Peters. 1919. OCLC 3713791 – via Hebrew Union College Libraries.
• Muddy Jim and Other Rhymes: 12 Illustrated Health Jingles for Children. Jim Publication Company. 1919. See also OCLC 184990307.

Patent images in Tag Image File Format

• U.S. patent 199,141: Telephone (induction coils). Submitted October 1877. Issued January 1878.
• U.S. patent 222,652: Telephone (carbon diaphragm microphone). Submitted August 1879. Issued December 1879.
• U.S. patent 224,573: Microphone (loose carbon rod). Submitted September 1879. Issued February 1880.
• U.S. patent 225,790: Microphone (spring carbon rod). Submitted November 1879. Issued March 1880.
• UK Patent 15232. Submitted November 8, 1887.
• U.S. patent 372,786: Gramophone (horizontal recording). Original submission May 1887. Resubmitted September 1887. Issued November 8, 1887.
• U.S. patent 382,790: Process of Producing Records of Sound (recorded on a thin wax coating over metal or glass surface, subsequently chemically etched). Submitted March 1888. Issued May 1888.
• U.S. patent 463,569: Combined Telegraph and Telephone (microphone). Submitted June 1877. Issued November 1891.
• U.S. patent 548,623: Sound Record and Method of Making Same (duplicate copies of flat, zinc disks by electroplating). Submitted March 1893. Issued October 1895.
• U.S. patent 564,586: Gramophone (recorded on underside of flat, transparent disk). Submitted November 7, 1887. Issued July 1896.