When we look at the technologies that we use on a daily basis, it seems odd to consider that the men and women who helped to produce them were born in the middle of the 19th century. Such is the case, though, with inventor Emile Berliner, who invented the microphone that was first used in Bell Telephones as well as the gramophone and acoustic tiles. In addition, he developed a prototype for the helicopter, which was flown by his son 12 years later. Moreover, Emile Berliner was a pioneer for public health and women’s rights. It seems that he was truly a man with a clear and unique vision for the people of the world.

Berliner was born on May 20, 1851 in Hanover, Germany to Samuel Berliner and Sarah Friedman. He was the fourth oldest of the Berliner’s 11 surviving children (out of 13). By age 14, due to the family’s modest means and the fact that his older brothers had been called into military service, it became necessary for Emile to work to help support his family. He first apprenticed in a printing house, then clerked in a dry goods store. It was there that he invented a new power-weaving loom in order to improve the weaving processes that were being employed at the time.

At age 19, Emile left Germany for the United States. A family friend, Nathan Gotthelf, who had emigrated to the U.S., had offered Emile a position in his dry goods store. In his early years in this country, he took up such jobs as selling glue, painting, and giving German lessons. As well, he took piano and violin lessons, and studied physics and electricity at the Cooper Institute in Washington.

In 1876, at an exhibition in Philadelphia, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his telephone. Unfortunately, the product did not transmit a clear auditory message. It was around this time that Berliner transformed his small Washington apartment into an electrical laboratory and installed a telephone between his and his landlady’s apartments so that he could develop a new transmitter for Bell’s telephone. The result of his work was a microphone and a transformer, which made the signal clear at just about any distance. He patented his discovery on June 4, 1877. By September of that year, he had arranged a deal with Bell Telephone Company of Boston, who paid him $50,000 for the use of his patent, and put him on salary with the company as a chief engineer. The telephone was first marketed as the Bell-Berliner Telephone. Berliner’s microphone and transformer became the prototypes for those used in telephones, electric plants, power stations, radio and television.

In 1883 Berliner left Bell Telephone and returned to Washington, where he set up a new lab in his home. At the time, several in the scientific community were working on the development of devices, which would mechanically reproduce sound. Among them were Thomas Edison and Bell Laboratories, each of whom had developed devices for such a purpose. Edison’s was called the “tinfoil phonograph,” which employed the use of a revolving cylinder for recording and playback, had a duration of approximately two minutes and had to be cranked by hand. Bell’s device, the graphophone, used a spring mechanism so that it did not need to be cranked by hand, and a wax cylinder for recording and playback, which produced a slightly truer sound and allowed for somewhat longer duration. Berliner went about the matter from a slightly different angle. First, he decided it would be easier to cut a flat disc than a cylindrical one, and he also began working with different materials. Eventually, he came to a process using flat shellac discs, which could be inexpensively and quickly reproduced with the use of a master. Next, he devised a way to use the side of a needle rather than the point, which reduced wear considerably. Then he devised what would later come to be known as the gramophone, a machine to play back the discs which employed the use of a transmitter (microphone) attached to a metal stylus. It produced the most marketable reproduction and amplification of sound then known

Berliner and some of his friends set up The United States Gramophone Company in 1893 for the purpose of commercializing the gramophone. Sales started out slow, and they quickly realized that they had to add a wind-up spring motor in order to make it more appealing. Between 1896 and 1900, almost 25,000 motors were produced. In 1900, Berliner moved the company to Montreal. Many believe it was the result of a dispute between Berliner and his marketing firm, The Seaman National Gramophone, which caused him to move his operations. Emile’s grandson, Oliver Berliner, explained in the Antique Phonograph News in 1992 that the move was the result of the ease of rail transport between there and Philadelphia.

In January of 1900, the painting of Nipper the dog listening to a gramophone made its debut appearance in an advertisement, and by July 16, the image was registered as the company’s trademark. Ironically, in the original painting, by an artist named Francis Barraud, the dog was listening to a phonograph. When he tried to sell the work to the Edison Bell Company, he was told, “Dogs don’t listen to phonographs.” Of course, the painting had to be modified to show the dog listening to a gramophone, but it became one of the more widely recognized advertisements and trademarks, and is still recognized by audiophiles today. Many, though, know it to be the trademark of RCA Victor. This is due to the fact that the Victor Talking Machine, which later merged with RCA to become RCA Victor, purchased Berliner’s company, in 1924, and the trademark went with each successive merger.
Emile Berliner did not sequester his engineering talents to those pursuits purely electronic. His love of music led him to various pursuits, among them to identify why antique violins were more brilliant than newer ones. He determined that newer instruments did not vibrate freely because the wood fibers under the bridge needed to adjust to the uneven pressures created by the strings, and that this took time and use. He thus created the Berliner violin, which was strung directly to the body. A couple of prominent musicians of the time took up his product, among them Leopold Damrosch and the then well-known violinist Camilla Urso. However, the instrument’s popularity never really soared.

Another contribution Berliner made to the field of music had to do with acoustics. Berliner was an avid theatregoer, and was constantly disturbed by acoustic inadequacies in theaters and concert halls. While architects at the time considered acoustics to be “a gamble,” Berliner was determined to prove otherwise. It is no surprise, then, that by October of 1925, he was able to present to the American Institute of Architects in Washington his acoustic tiles and acoustic cement. No longer were acoustics a matter of chance.

Emile Berliner also had an interest in medicine, most likely advanced by the death of his daughter in 1890 as the result of a gastrointestinal disorder. Berliner was convinced that the consumption of raw milk was to blame for a large part of the then 30% infant mortality rate, and he was determined to affect a change. In 1891 he created the Society for the Prevention of Sickness, which launched a campaign urging people to scald milk and then keep it cool and covered thereafter in order to prevent illness. In 1906, Berliner was made chairman of a milk committee, arranged by a former surgeon-general of the U.S. Army, Brigadier-General George M. Sternberg. By 1907 Berliner organized the first Milk Conference in Washington, D.C., which focused on the importance of pasteurization and quality controls in the production of milk. It was believed that dung traces from tubercular cows were the cause of many cases in humans. The conference resulted in the adoption of milk standards by the Federal Government. So concerned was Emile Berliner over the subject of children’s health that he wrote or co-authored, published, and distributed for free more than a dozen books on the subject.

Emile Berliner was ahead of his time in numerous ways, including the topic of women’s rights. He believed that, given the proper education and resources, women could equal men in the sciences. He thus created the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship, named for his mother. Between 1909 and 1926, fellowship awards were given annually in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, physiology, paleontology, geology, nutrition, zoology and related subjects.

As if to imply that his engineering and philanthropic pursuits were not enough, Berliner also took an interest in aeronautics. In 1907, he produced a prototype for a helicopter that his son, Henry, flew 12 years later. In 1908, he designed a lightweight internal combustion engine, upon which a wide variety of aircraft were later predicated. By 1920, Emile and Henry had developed a helicopter that both lifted off the ground and traveled forward a short distance.

Emile Berliner died of a heart attack on August 3, 1929 at the age of 78. He left behind him a legacy that should be widely recognized today. No only did his technological and mechanical innovations make way for many a mechanism that we take for granted today, but his work in the field of public health is likely responsible for saving thousands of lives and paving the way for improving the condition of public health in this country.