Emile Berliner

Emil Berliner (English Emile Berliner, born May 20, 1851 in Hanover; † August 3, 1929 in Washington, DC) is considered the inventor of the record and the gramophone. He received patents on other inventions. In 1881 he received the U.S. citizenship.

Family

Emil's great-grandfather, Jacob Abraham Joseph († 1811), his wife Dina Friedberg ( † 1840), his mother and one sister had settled in the early 1770s in the Hanover Neustadt. In the Jewish community, he was, according to his birthplace, Jokew (Jacob) called Berlin. In 1776 he obtained a letter of protection. In their house, Lange Straße 27, they offered a kosher lunch. Their children were Bella Betty (* 1778) and Moses ( 1786-1854 ).

Moses was able to open a textile store in the mountain road during the freedom of trade as a result of the French occupation. In 1811 he married Friederike Enoch from Celle ( 1785-1838, the daughter of Wolf Samuel Enoch ( 1747-1797 ) and esters Berlin ), with whom he had six children. In 1833 he moved his business to the Lange Straße 33

Moses eldest son, Samuel Berliner (1813-1872), also ran a textile business. In 1846 he bought and his wife Sally Friedman ( 1826-1903 ) civil rights. Their children were: Hermann ( * 1848), Jacob ( 1849-1918 ), Adolph (* 1850), Emil (* 1851), Manfred ( 1853-1931 ), Franzisca (* 1854; verh Friedberg. ), Rebecca (* 1855 ), Moritz ( * 1856), Johanne (* 1857, died young ), Joseph ( 1858-1938 ), Rachel (* 1864) and Else (* 1869). Emil grew up with his siblings in modest circumstances. Four sons of Moses remained in Hanover.

Life

From 1861 to 1865 he attended the Samson school in Wolfenbüttel. Then he made an apprenticeship and had to help with work in a print shop and later in a tie shop to support the family.

He emigrated in 1870 as a young man to the United States to escape the Prussian conscription. He accompanied a friend of his father, Nathan Gotthelf, to Washington and worked for three years in the dry goods business Gotthelf, Behrend and Co. He then moved to New York where he lived with casual water, 1875, ultimately as Flaschenspüler in the laboratory of Constantin Fahl mountain. At night, he studied at the Cooper Institute (now Cooper Union). Later he lived after he had come by his inventions into money, but partly also in the UK, Canada and Germany.

From the proceeds of his first invention at Bell Labs in 1877, the Berliner 's microphone for telephone, he established his own laboratory. 1881-83 he visited Hanover. In 1887 he applied for a patent on a disk-shaped sound recordings, carved into the outside inwards spiral and lateral recording a groove and so the vibrations of the host membrane were similarly conserved. A further component was also a recording and playback device, the forerunner of the gramophone. He spoke of the wheel in his native German as a " record".

The great advantage of the disk against the 1877 Edison invented and patented cylindrical recordings was their reproducibility. Edison's cylinder had to be recorded separately and were therefore unaffordable for the average consumer, an invented after 1902 method, the phonograph rolls in a casting process in larger numbers and thus be able to produce cheaper, came too late and was the pressing of gramophone records also always be used.

Berliner's plate was at the very beginning of hard rubber, then soon a - much cheaper - mixture of cotton flakes, slate powder, carbon black (hence the black color ) and shellac (hence the fragility ). In the hot pressing, the shellac expressed on the two surfaces and thus sealed the grooves. This enabled the industrial production of large quantities of which he recorded in 1889 and 1910 to about gradually perfected, such as sticking paper labels and describing both sides.

Shellac records at 78 rpm were virtually unchanged for more than 60 years of their basic design here, from about 1895 to about 1955, in East Germany and Eastern Europe to 1961 and in parts of Asia, produced until 1968 and then, from vinyl records 45s - 33s singles and LPs, replaced. But even with the vinyl records remained - except a much closer spacing of the grooves neighborhood ( Füllschrift ) that the plastic material blazes now and thus stereo recordings Enabled - Get the basic principle Emil Berliner.

Other inventions

Emil Berliner made ​​a number of other inventions. Then he received numerous patents in the United States, for example, on September 4, 1883 on one designed by his idea parquet floor.

Between 1907 and 1926, Berlin worked with John Newton Williams, and later with his son Henry Berliner helicopters at it - misleading from today's perspective - called Gyrocopter. By this we mean technically different gyroplane today. With a test flight on July 11, 1908, he proved that his flying machine could lift twice its own weight. Then he turned first to rotary engines in aviation, he had developed together with the specialist Adams - Farwell for this purpose. This was followed by the larger Aero Mobile and working on concepts with a coaxial rotor and coaxial tandem rotor. The latter, built in 1910, provided an important basis for the U.S. twin-rotor helicopters of the 1940s. As a spin -off of these developments founded Emil Berliner 1909 a company for the construction of rotary engines for aviation, the Gyro Motor Company in Washington, DC, which she produced until about 1926.

Others

His brother Joseph Berliner, in Hanover, the German Grammophon initiated (a branch of which was founded in London Gramophone Company ) and the villa inhabited Simon, introduced in 1898, the first recorded music in mass production here. He had also been instrumental in the dissemination of the phone in Germany. 1914 Emil Berliner donated in honor of his mother Sarah Berliner Fellowship ( Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship ). This award supports women who have a degree in chemistry, physics or biology. Since 1928, the Fellowship of the American Association of University Women is awarded

The Emil Berliner Studios in Hannover- Langenhagen to May 2008 were the in-house recording studio of German classical label Grammophon (DG); then the DG sold them in a management buy-out of the " EBS Productions GmbH & Co. KG ". Since then, EBS ( " Emil Berliner Studios "), an independent production studio for acoustic music ( classical, jazz, crossover and film music productions ). In spring 2010, EBS moved to the center of Berlin.