Berliner Kämmer & Reinhardt Gramophone

Emile Berliner and the Invention of the Gramophone and Disc Record

The history of the disc-record gramophone begins with the Berliner Gramophone Company’s founder, the German-born Emile Berliner (1851-1929) who immigrated to the United States in 1870. Settling in New York, Berliner worked several jobs in his early days while he taught himself about electricity and acoustics. After moving to Washington, D.C., Berliner began to experiment in a small lab he built in his apartment. His interests led him to work on an improvement to Alexander Graham Bell’s newly invented telephone, which could benefit from improvements to the transmitter to make it a viable product. Berliner’s experiments resulted in a practical transmitter for which he applied for a patent on June 4th 1877. Berliner then sold this patent in 1878 to Bell for $50,000 and was retained as a consultant by the company.

In a story told by Emile’s grandson Oliver Berliner, the original offer was for $50,000 or stock in Bell’s company. In 1986, the American government mandated that Bell Telephone would be broken up into several subsidiaries and at that time they determined that had Emile taken the shares in Bell Telephone, the value would have been $1,086,000,000.00.

Berliner’s New Endeavour
After a 2-year leave of absence in Hanover, Germany, Emile Berliner then returned to the United States in 1883, where he resigned from Bell and set up a lab in his home that was to be the birthplace of his newest endeavor, perfecting the recording and reproduction of sound.

Berliner’s experiments were initially conducted using a method originally proposed by Leon Scott de Martinville, where sound waves were traced by a laterally (side to side) vibrating stylus onto a cylinder, wrapped with a piece of paper coated in lamp black. To record the sounds, the user would speak forcefully into a funnel which focused the sound waves onto a stylus that then traced the vibrations onto the paper by scraping off the lampblack as it passed over the surface. As the coated paper passed under the vibrating stylus, the sound waves were scribed into the lamp black by the stylus. Berliner then cut these paper cylinders into a strip in order to have them etched into a piece of flat zinc or other suitable metal such as copper or nickel using a purely mechanical process of engraving, by chemical deposition or his preferred method, a photo-engraving process.

Constructing a crude reproducer by sawing off a telephone receiver and diaphragm to which he attached a needle that extended beyond the diaphragm, Berliner would run this along the groove in the flat zinc plate to reproduce the original sounds recorded by his device. Although the recordings hinted at success (producing only fragments of speech) his results were successful enough to warrant patenting his process. On November 8, 1887, Berliner was granted United States patent 372,786 “Gramophone” which outlined Berliner`s method of recording and reproducing sounds using the lateral (side to side) method and included diagrams of the basic equipment needed to achieve this.

The advantages of Berliner’s developments were evident as the transfer of a recording onto a zinc, copper or nickel medium was significantly more durable than the vertical incising method used on the wax-coated cardboard cylinder from the same era.

Berliner’s First Disc
Further experiments in 1887 resulted in the replacement of the paper-wrapped cylinder with an 11-inch diameter glass disc coated lampblack. To facilitate the change to recording on a disc, Berliner designed a hand- or weight-driven apparatus upon which the prepared disc was then mounted with lampblack side facing down. The recording stylus would remove the lampblack from below as it traced the sound waves, leaving the glass exposed.

As was to become the practice, a point or stylus was used to hand-etch recording information on the centre of the disc, which was then given a coating of shellac to protect the undulating wave pattern, yielding a better and more permanent tracing. Early tracings were used to produce a photo-negative and then through a photo engraving process, the photo-negative was subsequently transferred to a polished zinc plate, which was then subjected to several chemical steps resulting in a finished zinc record.

The First Disc Patent
Towards the end of 1887, Berliner’s innovations had progressed to the point that further patents were required. He filed for a Untied States patent on November 7, 1887 (patent 564,586 Gramophone) which was not granted until July 28, 1896. He also filed for a British patent on November 8, 1887 (patent 15,232) which included elements from both his United States patents, 372,786 and 564,586 and a German patent (E. Berliner Grammophon D.R.P. [Deutsches Reichspatent] 45048), granted November 8, 1887.

Although Berliner now had a process for making recordings, much more research needed to be done to develop a practical process for mass producing records.

The Direct to Disc Recording Method
As Berliner continued his developments, in early 1888 he hit upon a significant improvement to the process whereby he could eliminate the delicate and time-consuming photo-engraving step and instead record directly onto a polished metal plate coated with a delicate material that offered no resistance to the stylus yet could resist the chemical etching process. This simplified process produced a much more accurate reproduction of the original tracing in a significantly shorter time. In early 1888, these improvements had progressed sufficiently to be patented (US patent No. 382,790 Filed March 1888, granted May 15, 1888 “Process of Producing Records of Sound”). By the early spring of 1888, Berliner was able to produce numerous recordings that featured spoken word, singers, violins and pianos.

The Disc Gramophone’s Debut
Berliner’s new direct acid-etching process had its first public exhibition when he was invited to a meeting of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia on May 16th, 1888 (Note: the day after his latest patent was granted) with the aid of his assistant, Werner Suess, to a packed auditorium of just under 400 men and women.

Using zinc discs, which he referred to as phonautograms, he gave a program which consisted of the following selections:
1. Baritone Solos: “Yankee Doodle”; “Baby Mine”; “Nancy Lee”, “O du lieber Augustein”
2. Cornet Solo
3. Baritone Solo: “Tar’s Farewell”
4. Soprano Solos: “Home Sweet Home”; “Annie Laurie”
5. Tenor Solo: “A Wandering Minstrel I”
6. Recitation: “The Declaration of Independence”

Working Toward a Mass Produced Disc
Following the exhibition to the Franklin Institute, Berliner set out to complete his work on an electroplating process to create a negative copy of the original. The negative copy, once removed from the master zinc disc, would allow Berliner to imprint these grooves into a material, thus providing him with a system to mass produce records.

Public Exhibitions
By late 1888, his recording, record making and reproducing technology was well developed enough to begin the process of introducing his innovations to the public. In September, 1889 Berliner embarked on a year-long trip to his native home in Hanover, Germany, where he made a number of very successful and well publicized demonstrations of his gramophone to technical societies, to the German Imperial Patent Office and the elite of the German scientific community.

Berliner was very well received and his exploits garnered much interest in his invention on both sides of the Atlantic, as news of triumphant demonstrations pitting Berliner’s gramophone directly against Edison’s phonograph and wax cylinders (introduced just one year earlier) was reported in the United States.

Gramophone Production Begins
Following these successful demonstrations to the public and to the scientific community, Berliner set out to bring his invention to market. To this end a licensing agreement was secured with the firm of Kämmer & Reinhardt, a doll manufacturer in Germany, to market a hand-driven toy gramophone to be distributed in Europe and Britain.

Gramophone Record Production
Marketing of records began at the same time as the gramophones, in August or September 1889 with 12.5 cm (5-inch) discs being manufactured out of either celluloid or hard rubber while some original zinc discs were made available for an additional cost.

Kämmer, Reinhardt records typically had paper labels with the text or title of the selection and Berliner’s two patent dates, Nov, 1887 and May, 1888 affixed to the back (labels on the fronts of records would not become common until much later). The front of these single-sided discs had “E. Berliner’s Grammophon” and the German patent number “D.R.P. 45048” (Deutsches Reichspatent) stamped into them along with the title and record number, which had either been hand-written or impressed into the original wax master. Sometimes raised lettering was used for the record number and unfortunately recording dates were not written on the discs, something that collectors and historians are grateful appear on the later 7-inch American Berliner discs.

The Gramophone Reaches the Market
Manufacturing of the first gramophones and disc records began in August or September, 1889 and continued with a number of variations until 1893 or 1894. Berliner’s efforts in Germany were quite successful, as they reportedly sold some 14,500 gramophones and an estimated 100,000 records of some 600 titles in 6 languages.

Emile Berliner Set to Triumph In America
With everything in place to begin marketing of the gramophone in August or September 1890, Berliner relocated his family back to the United States in August, 1890. Emile assigned the task of overseeing his interests in Germany to his brother Jacob Berliner while he pursued finding backers to manufacture and market the gramophone in the United States.

After having modest success with his toy gramophone in Germany, Berliner traveled back to the United States in 1890 to begin pursuing entry into the American marketplace even though his key American patent was still to be granted. In order to make his gramophone attractive to investors, Berliner opened up a retail store in Baltimore, Maryland, in late 1894 to market his latest hand-driven gramophone and new 7-inch discs. After several failed attempts to raise sufficient capital, Emile Berliner obtained $25, 000 of financial backing which he used to incorporate the Berliner Gramophone Company in October 1895 and set up a factory at 1032 Filbert Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to control the manufacture and sale of gramophones and records.

American Made Berliner Hand Driven Gramophone

The Iconic American Made Berliner Trade Mark Gramophone