Collection
Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
Articles and Essays
Emile Berliner
The Early Years (1851-75) Emile (originally Emil) Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, on May 20, 1851. He was one of thirteen children born to Samuel and Sarah Friedman Berliner, two of whom died in infancy. His father was a merchant and a Talmudic scholar, and his mother was an amateur musician. From both parents Berliner and his siblings inherited a great sense of...
The Gramophone
Early Sound Recording Devices During the early 1880s a contest developed between Thomas A. Edison and the Volta Laboratory team of Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter . The objective was to transform Edison's 1877 tinfoil phonograph, or talking machine, into an instrument capable of taking its place alongside the typewriter as a business correspondence device. This involved not only building a better...
The Berliner Recordings
Berliner Recordings at the Library of Congress The Library of Congress possesses one of the largest collections of Berliner discs, including many zinc experimental discs, several zinc "letters" that apparently were mailed between Washington, D.C., and Hanover, Germany, and several pirated discs with all references to Berliner erased. There are very rare early celluloid discs and rare early rubber discs. Most remaining Berliners are...
Emile Berliner Family Tree
Information based on The Origin and History of the Family and Branches of the Berliners of Hanover 1720-1997 by Philipp Goldmann (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Professional Press, 1997). Dates and places of birth and death are not always known.
