Berliner, Emile

Berliner, pronounced BUR luh nuhr, Emile (1851-1929), invented a practical telephone transmitter in 1877. In 1887, he also developed the first successful phonograph that used disc-shaped records. Berliner developed a telephone transmitter in which sound, such as that made by the human voice, varied the strength of an electric current. These variations caused a telephone receiver to reproduce the original sound. Berliner also invented a way to press duplicate records from one master disc (see Phonograph). He was born in the kingdom of Hanover, in what is now Germany, and came to the United States in 1870.

Contributor: James E. Brittain, Ph.D., Prof., School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Berliner, Emile

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