 |
| Emile Berliner |
Emile Berliner (formally known as Emil Berliner) was an inventor best
known for developing the disc record gramophone. He founded The
Berliner Gramophone Company in 1895, The Gramophone Company in London,
England, Deutsche Gramophone in Hanover, Germany and Berliner
Gram-o-phone Company of Canada.
Emile Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany on the 20th of May 1851.
He was one of thirteen children born to Samuel and Sarah Berliner.
Following a few years of school in Hanover, Berliner was sent to
Wolfenbuttel from which he graduated in 1865 at the age of fourteen.
Berliner then spent several years there after doing odd jobs in Hanover
to help support the large Berliner family. He migrated to the United
States of America in 1870, where he lived in Washington, D.C. and
officially turned a citizen in 1881. He became interested in the new
audio technology of the telephone and phonograph, and invented an
improved telephone transmitter. In 1886 Berliner began experimenting
with methods of sound recording. He was granted his first patent for
what he called the “gramophone” in 1887. Berliner’s other inventions
include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth; an acoustic
tile and an early version of the helicopter.
Berliner started to compose as well. He expressed his love for
America and the opportunities it had afforded him in a patriotic song
which became a smash hit of its day: The Columbian Anthem- a song
debuted in Washington on Washington’s Birthday at the 1897 national
council of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As a composition it
ranks easily with the best national hymns ever written.
Berliner turned his attention to the violin. It is well known that
antique violins are consistently more brilliant over their entire range
than new instruments. Berliner determined that the new instrument did
not vibrate freely because the fibers of the wood under the bridge took
much time to adjust to the uneven pressures transmitted by the strings
through the bridge to the instruments body.
In 1909 he donated funds for an infirmary building at the Starmont
Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Washington Grove, Maryland, dedicated to the
memory of his father. Berliner was president of the Washington
Tuberculosis Association for some years. In 1920 Berliner endowed a
silver cup as an annual award by the Tuberculosis Association to the
city whose school children were most engaged in his health crusade.
In 1899, Berliner wrote a book, Conclusions that speaks of his agnostic ideas on religion and philosophy.
Berliner was also awarded the Franklin Institute’s John Scott Medal
in 1897, and later the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1913 and the Franklin
Medal in 1929.
Emile Berliner died of a heart attack at the age of 78 and is buried
in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Through his innovations and
inventions, he left invaluable legacies in communications, acoustics,
and aeronautics to America and to the rest of the world.
