Emile Berliner

Emile Berliner (1851–1929) was a German-American inventor who developed the gramophone and flat disc records and improved the telephone microphone.

Gramophone: A sound-reproducing machine that plays recorded discs using a stylus and mechanical amplification. Berliner developed this disc-playing machine as an alternative to the phonograph.
Lateral-cut recording: A recording method in which sound is represented by side-to-side movement of a groove. Berliner’s disc records encoded sound through lateral groove motion.
Hanover: A city in northern Germany and the birthplace of Emile Berliner. Berliner was born in Hanover in 1851 before emigrating to the United States.
Thomas Edison: An American inventor and businessman whose inventions included the phonograph and practical electric-lighting systems. Edison’s cylinder phonograph competed with Berliner’s disc-based recording system.
Gramophone Company: A British record and gramophone company established to commercialize Berliner’s system. The company became a key vehicle for selling Berliner’s technology in Britain.
Gramophone record: A disc-shaped medium that stores sound as grooves traced by a stylus. Berliner’s flat disc records became the gramophone’s defining recording format.
Phonograph: A sound-recording and playback machine that commonly uses a stylus tracing grooves on a cylinder. Edison’s cylinder phonograph was the prominent format Berliner’s disc system challenged.
German-American inventors: Inventors of German birth or heritage who worked in the United States. Berliner’s career belongs to the history of German-born innovators in America.
Eldridge R. Johnson: An American machinist and businessman who manufactured gramophones and co-founded the Victor Talking Machine Company. Johnson’s manufacturing partnership helped turn Berliner’s gramophone into a commercial product.
Deutsche Grammophon: A German record company founded in 1898 to manufacture discs using Berliner’s system. Berliner’s brother Joseph helped establish this company to produce his records in Germany.

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