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Emile Berliner starts work leading to the invention of the gramophone

When
1887–1896
Where
Washington, D.C.
Episodes
3

Emile Berliner, a German-American inventor, developed the lateral-cut flat disc record, known as the gramophone record, used with a gramophone. His patent work included U.S. Patent 372,786 for horizontal recording and U.S. Patent 382,790 for a chemical etching process, distinguishing his flat-disc method from Edison's cylinder phonograph.

Episodes

  1. 1887 · Washington, D.C.Horizontal Recording Patent

    Berliner filed and received a patent for horizontal recording, a key innovation for the gramophone.

  2. 1887-1896 · Washington, D.C.Flat Disk Recording Patent

    Berliner received a patent for recording on the underside of flat, transparent disks.

  3. 1888 · Washington, D.C.Chemical Etching Process

    Berliner patented a process for producing records using chemical etching on wax-coated surfaces.

Background and detail

Background. Emile Berliner, born in Hanover in 1851, migrated to the United States in 1870 to avoid military service. He worked in a shop in Washington, D.C., before moving to Boston in 1877. Berliner is credited with inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record, which differed from Edison's cylinder-based phonograph, invented in 1877.

Patents. Berliner secured several key patents for his gramophone technology. U.S. Patent 372,786 for horizontal recording was issued in November 1887. Another patent, 382,790, covered the process of producing records via chemical etching on wax-coated surfaces, issued in May 1888. A later patent, 564,586, addressed recording on the underside of flat disks, issued in 1896.

Commercialization. In 1894, Berliner founded the United States Gramophone Company after securing investment from businessmen. The company sold single-sided discs with a standard speed of about 70 rpm. Although a German licensee produced toy gramophones in 1890, U.S. patents restricted their sale to Europe. Johnson's and Berliner's separate companies reorganized in 1901 to form the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey.

Sources

  1. Emile Berliner Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-10
  2. Phonograph record Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.