About Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner (born Emil Berliner; May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) was a German-American inventor and businessman who invented the lateral-cut flat disc record, also known as a "gramophone record," used with a gramophone. He founded the United States Gramophone Company in 1894. == Early life == Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851 into a Jewish merchant family. He completed an apprenticeship to become a merchant, as was family tradition. While his real hobby was invention, he worked as an accountant to make ends meet. To avoid being drafted in the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner migrated to the United States of America in 1870 with a friend of his father's, in whose shop he worked in Washington, D.C. He moved to New York and, living off temporary work such as a paper route and cleaning bottles, he studied physics at night at the Cooper Union Institute. == Career == After some time working in a livery stable, Berliner became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph. He invented an improved telephone transmitter, one of the first types of microphones. The patent was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company (see The Telephone Cases), but contested, in a long legal battle, by Thomas Edison. On February 27, 1901, the United States Court of Appeals would declare Berliner's patent void and awarded Edison full rights to the invention.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.