Oliver Berliner attending a CAPS meeting. Oliver, Noel Martin, Mike Bryan, Domenic DiBernardo. Oct 30, 2011

As I'm horrified to note that it's been nine years since I returned to the lands of my birth to visit the CAPS folk, it's high time I disclosed that, over the years, my positions with respect to certain aspects of grandpa's in- ventions have changed. I believe that what I propound here is correct and can possibly be considered the last words on the matters; and I can thus approach my imminent great reward with a clear conscience.

The Great Emile's first and greatest invention (coming at age 26) was a kind of telephone that Emile believed would overcome the shortcomings of Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 telephone. There were other inventors with the same goal. But what was extraordinary about the Berliner concept was that it defied the science of the day, as pronounced by the eminent "electrician", the Compte du Moncel, that current cannot pass between two electrodes that don't touch each other. Not knowing he couldn't do it, Emile went and violated the law of physics. How did he do it?

Emile Berliner’s Microphone

Simple. The "law" doesn't apply if one of the contacts is in motion. That aspect of grandpa's telephone was the missing link that Bell needed to make his own 'phone, which was sound powered, practical. What Bell adopted was the transmitter that incorporated battery power which made possible long-distance telephony, and an isolation coil that provided amplification while preventing D.C. voltage from getting to the receiver.

For the sale of this innovation, Emile was paid US$50,000 in 1878. He declined to take payment in the form of Bell System shares. [He'd been warned that Western Union would try to take over telephony.] Had he done so, his stock, dividends added, would have been worth One Billion Eighty-six Million Dollars at the time of the Bell System breakup in 1984. Damn!

Sheet 2

I've shown Sheet 2 of the Telephone/Telegraph patent. The dotted lines depict a tube connecting a mouthpiece to the transmitter enclosure (which Emile finally called a microphone in patent 222,652 of 11 August 1879). P is the coil whose output feeds the receiver. Emile's initial patent, applied-for June 4, 1877, was not issued until Nov. 17, 1891 due to interferences by politicians. The Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Brewer presid- ing, swept aside all interferences, ruling that Bell and Berliner had done nothing to delay the patent's issuance, further that Emile Berliner was the sole and true inventor of the microphone.

The toy-drum prototype grandpa used to confirm the loose-contact principle is likely the one that's in Bell Canada's archive. The loose-contact (variable resistance) microphone was used for a hundred years in all the world's telephones. Today its century-old battery power emanating from each "telco's" central office that still provides the necessary connection to the world for places where power failures render current-day electronic handsets unusable during a power out- age. A-men.

And if you fret that in a disaster your landline stops working, let me tell you that the loss of service is by decree of your "city fathers" who mistakenly believe that residents must "stay off" the telephone exactly when folks need it most, so that emergency personnel will have clear circuits. Fact is, authorities' circuits are generally not in the group serving affected areas and first responders have always had radiotelephones and never needed to use your lines. Telco landlines virtually never fail...thanks to Emile Berliner's circuit design.

Emile Berliner Courtesy of the Library of Congress

By the way, the U.S Patent Office has opined that its 'most valuable' patent is that of the telephone (by a Canadian ex-pat), which converted sounds to electrical pulses and "down the line" (distant) converted the electricity back to audible sounds. And don't forget that the Berliner telephone transmitter was the first device to combine alternating current (sounds converted to electricity) and direct current (battery) in the same circuit; besides being the first to pass current between electrodes that didn't contact each other.

The Greeks have a word for it.

Before I use any more of them, let's keep in mind (the English language spelling of) the many Greek words that have enjoyed common usage in our tight little industry.

telephone - distant sound
microphone - tiny sound
phonautograph - sound signature

phonograph - sound display
graphophone - display of sound
gramophone - sound of words

The Gramophone

I have always deplored the fact that many cognoscenti used the phrase, "disc gramophone", when referring to Emile's best known invention. But the truth is that in his U.S patent of Nov. 8, 1887 is depicted (Fig. 1) a cylinder recorder utilizing lateral cut. In this patent Emile describes his method of mass-producing cylinder records. As you can see, the recording is on a thin sheet wrapped around a mandrel. For mass production, the sheet is laid flat and duplicated. You've no doubt observed that with a wrapped original, or any copy for playing it, there'd be a click over the joint every time the mandrel made a complete turn. Fortunately, grandpa never had to bother with such a cumbersome and disappointing system - though for patenting, it did the job. Phew!

But why wasn't the disc gramophone included in the U.S patent? Simply because Emile was of the belief that both Bell and Edison's experimentation with discs (both inventors decided that the cylinder was superior) precluded his getting a U.S patent. Ho ho.

Fig. 1

Fig. 8

We don't get to learn of the disc gramophone until we encounter British patent 15,232 of the same date, where Fig. 1 shows the cylinder gramophone recorder/ player. Fig. 8 shows the disc recorder. Note that the cutting stylus (29) is beneath the disc, allowing the "chip" (stylus scrapings) to fall away. Emile specifies in the text that the cutting should start at the inside of the disc, thus avoiding chip-stylus entanglements. Inside-start was used in radio broadcast transcriptions for decades, but not in 78s, 33s and 45s for the consumer. Radio transcriptions were sometimes cut vertically. RCA broadcast turntables incorporated a clever velocity pickup cartridge...effectively a tiny ribbon microphone that tracked laterally- and vertically-cut discs.

Kämmer & Reinhardt Gramophone with metal base

Emile never recorded on the disc's bottom; but don't forget that today's Compact Discs, DVDs too, have inside-start, are recorded on one side - the bottom, and don't use paper labels. [Deutsche Grammophon introduced injection-molded 45s sans paper labels.] CDs are also mass produced via the Berliner method of 1887...incredible and spectacular, don't you agree? I'd like to apologize to those whom I disparaged. The phrase disc gramophone is perfectly proper.

Emile's first Berliner Gramophone Co. was incorporated in Newark, New Jersey in 1888 so that he'd have convenient access to the Duranoid Co., manufacturer of large, fancy celluloid buttons for ladies' garments. The buttons were stamped-out on a press, a process like what Emile needed in his disc-making process. Discs of celluloid quickly wore out; rubber discs changed shape.

The business collapsed as did the discs, though not before grandpa was able to determine that a hot "biscuit", principally of molten shellac from the Indonesian lac bug, met all requirements of record press and record player. Now, if only Emile had had the capital to go on...

Kämmer & Reinhardt Gramophone with wood base

May I interject that I found in my father's collection the oldest and rarest disc record in the world - a celluloid pressing. It's now in the hands of Montreal's Musée des Ondes Emile Berliner.

At a loss, Emile went back to the "old country" to visit the world-famous dollmaker, Kämmer & Reinhardt. Licensing was arranged for them to manufacture 125mm (5") children's records and the toy gramophones on which to play them. They'd be marketed in Deutschland und England. Emile would produce master recordings for K&R, who'd also produce their own. Out of this came gems in the Great Emile's still-German -accented voice: "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "The Lord's Prayer".

K&R's first gramophones were iron and weighed more than a kid could lift. These gave way to a hand-cranked, figure-8 belt-drive unit that was lighter and prettier. Horns were of gaily painted papier mache'.

The surviving image of Nipper from "The Story of Nipper"

Later, many full-size "figure 8" gramophones (with metal horn) would enjoy great market acceptance. Because the first production gramophones were for kids, hearsay among some of today's collectors mistakenly infers that Emile had created the gramophone as a toy.

Leaping ahead, I also must clarify (without detailing today the innumerable things that resulted in the 1901 formation of the Victor Talking Machine Co. -a long story, as the reader is well aware), that grandpa did not own nor control the Philadelphia company that bore his name. He'd gotten the long-sought financing from Thomas Parvin who thus owned 90% of the firm and ran it, with Emile owning 10% and relying on patent licensing fees for his compensation. Upon acquisition by the newly renamed Victor Company, Emile received Victor shares but played no role in Victor's activities. Parvin got shares and became a Victor director but not an officer.

It was Emile Berliner who in 1893 trundled over the bridge of the Delaware River that linked Philly to Camden, New Jersey where he found a struggling machinist who would create a clockwork motor to power the hand -crank gramophone. By the time of his retirement at the end of 1925, Eldridge Reeves Johnson had, in true rags-to-riches fashion, become one of America's richest men.

Eldridge Johnson renamed his Consolidated Talking Machine Co. as Victor to associate the new company with Emile Berliner's court victory. Confusingly, prior to the "reorganization" he'd released a record under the Victor label, named after Victoria, wife of an executive, a record producer who'd recently joined Consolidated. E.R.J. called his record players talking machines as he didn't want to use Emile Berliner's word, gramophone. The ultimate result of this decision was that in France and the Americas, gramophones were mistakenly called phonographs. Damn!

"His Master's Voice"

Canada's vastness required the Victor Company to establish a distribution centre in Toronto. My father chose to name it His Master's Voice, Ltd. The new factory that opened on Lenoir St. in Montreal in 1908 boasted an enormous rooftop sign depicting the world's most famous trade--mark, seen in a charming 1912 photo. When launched 1 Jan. 1900, the Berliner Gramophone Co. had pressed records in space rented from Canadian Bell Telephone Co. The new facility included a railway siding where boxcars were loaded with records and gramophones for shipment to points north and west. Lenoir St. is now the home of the Berliner museum. The sign saluting "His Master's Voice" is long gone. The loading dock and railway tracks have survived.

The new factory that opened on Lenoir St. in Montreal in 1908

In year 2000 I picked up CARAS' (Canada's recording society) award to the Great Emile for his founding of the country's recorded music industry a century earlier. I was brought to tears when the audience rose to honour the great man.

From the moment it became a trade-mark, a never- ending rumour had it that artist Francis Barraud had depicted the dog, Nipper, sitting on his late master Mark Barraud's coffin, listening to a recording of Mark's voice. Today I'm convinced that it truly was a coffin that Francis had shown - but he thought better of admitting it. Of course, we know that the dog-with-gramophone was a figment of Francis' imagination; further that Mark never made a recording.

"His Master’s Voice" painting by Francis Barraud

It wasn't long after "HMV" had achieved renown that Francis was accused of copying a photo allowing him to "remember" Nipper's countenance with such great detail after the dog had been dead some three years. To sidestep the accusations, he destroyed all photographs of Nipper...save one: the plate he reversed to make a print with Nipper facing in the proper direction for his purposes. "The Story of Nipper..." contains this image - printed the way it was meant to be.

Francis was years later asked to make as true a copy of his work as possible, to substitute for the original which would be hidden away in times of stress. Known as the "Chinese copy" for its faithfulness to the original, it was long, long afterwards sent by Gramophone Co. successor EMI to hang at its Capitol Records subsidiary in Hollywood. Now EMI itself is gone.

When I saw it, the painting (faithfully revealing the painted-over Edison-Bell cylinder mandrel and so indistinguishable from the original that it had to be marked COPY) had special glass over it for protection, as it hangs in a hallway. EMI eventually made spectacular lithographs of the painting which the photographer was asked to shoot in such a way that the overpainting could be readily seen in the prints.

Francis was also commissioned to make 24 identical, smaller copies of the original (sans the over-painting). Bought by Gramophone Co. and Victor Talking Machine Co., one went to Emile Berliner. As I believe grandpa brought his model microphone with him to Canada, I believe he also brought his painting and that his son, Herbert absconded with it. Herbert and Emile had been having disagreements over the course the company should take. On Emile's 1919 visit, Herbert struck his father, knocking him down.

Oliver Berliner

Right then, Herbert left the business and was never in contact with his father or brother again. He spent full time at his - Decca Records distributor - Compo Co. which he'd formed to compete with the Berliner Gramophone Co. that he'd headed. Edgar succeeded him - in 1924 selling the Company to Victor, becoming president of Victor- Canada, later of RCA Victor-Canada. Emile never completed those 1919 experiments in im- proving the quality of disc mastering. He immediately departed the last vestige of his companies, as well as the record business itself. The remainder of his life was spent solving public -health issues. He died at 78 at home in Washington, D.C. On August 3, 1929 RCA's National Broadcasting Co. held moments of silence over the network to signal the passing of Emile Berliner.

Herbert Berliner, his wife Jessie Kerr, and daughter Katherine (born, Montreal 30 Dec. 1915) are all dead. But where's grandpa's painting? My guess is that Katherine's child or grandchild has it. Who and where is that person? Continuing is my $1,000 offer to anyone who locates the painting.

I hope I've here shed some light on the many mystifying clashing concepts we've long endured; and that I haven't made things worse.

Thanx-fer-listnin'.

Ed. note: Berliner established his (second) gramophone company in Philadelphia for easy access to fotoengraving inventor Max Levi. Emile used Levi’s process in disc pressing for "etching the human voice".