At the age of 19 he traveled to the United States (1870). He spent much of his time in the library of the Cooper Institute, a place that would interest you for electricity and sound.
While in Philadelphia, he attended a show of scientific inventions and discoveries (1876). Among those that were the first telephone of Alexander Graham Bell which Berliner liked very much.
He investigated at his home in Washington how to improve that design. So he invented a sender that sent messages at any distance. Namely, invented the microphone.
The company Bell Telephone from Boston offered a sum of money to Berliner for his invention. Hiring him to work on other inventions. However, in 1883 he left the company and returned to Washington, to his laboratory. It was then that invented the gramophone (1887), who could record and reproduce sounds on discs.
On the gramophone and the phonograph, both are of mechanical recording. However, it is the only thing they have in common. Meanwhile he phonograph used cylinders, same as music boxes. The gramophone used recordsbut they weren’t vinyl acetate yet.
People say that Thomas edison He patented the phonograph in 1877, while Berliner patented the gramophone ten years later.
For its part, the gramophone began to be sold in 1893 by the company The United States Gramophone Company which Berliner founded. However, in 1899 his invention was in other companies.
Berliner, on January 2, 1900 begins with the manufacture of seven-inch single-sided discs, in Montreal. However, one of those companies negotiated an agreement with the American Gramophone and Columbia Phonograph to build the Zonophone, which was very similar.
Berliner found the exclusivity agreement a perfidy. However, through a trial the Seaman National Gramophone got Berliner could not sell his invention in the United States.
For this reason, he traveled and settled in Montreal (Canada), where he founded the Berliner Gram-O-phone Company. Thus, the inventor registered his company with a dog listening to a gramophone
Over time the company was bought by Victor Talking Machine Company (1924), which in 1929 was called RCA Victor.
Berliner passed away on August 3, 1929, from cardiac arrest.