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EMILE BEELINER
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EMILE BERLINER
(iJl^Caker of the <J)(Cicrophone
Frederic William Wile
<iAuthor tf
Men Around the Kaiser
The Aliault, Explaining the Britishers, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
,2.0
iho
U I COPTBIOHT, 1926
By Ta£ Bobbs-Mbbbill Coufant
ujS'
Printed in tht United States of America
PBrNTtO ANO SOUND
BV BRAUNWORTH & CO., IHO.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
To
THE YOUTH OF AMERICA
** whether their ancestors came over in
the Mayflower three centuries ago, or
in the steerage three years ago" . . .
— Calvin Coolidge, at Omaha, October 6, 1925
7V75^
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
To Clara Louise Leslie, whose researches in the
storehouse of Emile Berliner's papers, books and
memories paved the way to the construction of this
narrative, the author's acknowledgments are here
rendered. Her enthusiasm and zeal were incessant
sources of helpfulness^. F. W. W.
PREFACE
Me^ Wile's book is one of those wonder stories of
perennial fascination, the story of the life of an in-
ventive genius, with its struggles, its devotion and
persistence, and its ultimate success. To make this
story even more interesting, its hero, still alive and
active, has crowned his material success by the cap-
stone of a wise and notable philanthrophy. And he
illustrates in his life, as does that great scientist
Michael Pupin, the Serbian "immigrant to inven-
tor," in his, the successful taking advantage of
America's proverbial opportunity for any youth of
brains and industry, from anywhere in the world,
to rise to greatness. The German immigrant boy,
Emile Berliner, has become one of America's most
useful citizens.
But Berliner's contributions to science are not
restricted in their beneficence or in their origin to
America alone. There are no national boundaries
to science. Every nation in the world has contrib-
uted to the notable advance of scientific invention,
which is the basis of modern civilization. So much is
the development of those ideas the handiwork of the
men of every nation, that it is almost impossible to
assign to any particular nation the whole credit for
any one of our great industrial tools or for any one
PREFACE
of the great scientific hypotlieses by which we con-
duct so much of our historical life.
Great minds have arisen in every nation who
have grasped the work of the past and made it
contribute to the progress of the present. These
great discoveries, these great inventions, and these
great tools which humanity now has at its command
have come to us from a thousand sources. They are
the cumulated result of constant improvement upon
the work of those who have gone before.
The vast populations which the world supports
to-day, the high standards of living and comfort
with which we are surrounded, are directly due to
scientific discovery. It was science that prevented
the disaster Malthus predicted as the result of the
pressure of the population upon subsistence, for it
is science that has increased the productivity of
man. A score of men can live in comfort now where
only one lived in poverty a hundred years ago.
Discoveries in science are rarely news. There
is usually but little about them that is sensational,
and they are often intricate and difficult to compre-
hend. But the public should understand that if we
would maintain the continued advance of our mate-
rial, and to a considerable degree our spiritual life,
we must recognize and support scientific research.
Such research has great material values, but it also
has, and even more importantly, values of high
moral and spiritual character. The unfolding of
beauty, the aspiration to knowledge, the ever widen-
PEEFACE
ing penetration into the unknown, the discovery of
truth, and, finally, as Huxley says, ''the inculcation
of veracity of thought," are all of them ample rea-
sons why all good citizens should be interested in
the progress of science — and in the careers of men
like Emile Berliner.
/^j^ u.'^y^^w'^^^^*^
FOREWORD
Fbom the melting-pot which is the modern
United States there has emerged an amalgam which
is peculiarly American — an aristocracy of inventive
genius. Its members have illumined the progress of
mankind for as many years as the Republic has life.
Their achievements, indeed, are the milestones
which mark America's advance toward her present
eminence in the domains of culture, science and the
economic arts.
In the veins of American inventors the bloods
of many races have been fused. Some of them, like
Franklin, Fulton, Morse, Howe, Edison, McCormick,
Westinghouse and the Wrights, were products of
our OA^Ti soil, though many were the direct offspring
of Transatlantic progenitors. From that same
Old- World stock has come to us a contingent of
European native-born, which, nurtured in the
pioneering atmosphere of the New World, has made
rich contributions to the development not only of
American civilization, but of the human race. From
Scotland came Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of
the telephone. Germany sent us Charles Proteus
Steinmetz, electrician. From Greek loins sprang
another gifted electrician, Nikola Tesla. Hungary
FOREWOED
bequeathed America a Serbian cattleherd, Michael
Idvorsky Pupin, who is to-day a luminary in the
firmament of physics and electro-magnetics. To
John Ericsson, of Sweden, builder of the Monitor,
America has just reared a monument on the banks
of the Potomac.
A contemporary peer both of many of these
American-born and European-bom arbiters of the
modern universe is the man around whose career
of scientific accomplishment and philanthropic zeal
this biographical narrative revolves.
It is the story of Emile Berliner, servant of
civilization.
It is the story of an immigrant boy who became
a man with a billion contacts throughout the world.
It is the story of the telephone, the microphone
and the gramophone.
It is the story of one who wrought so wondrously
that civilized mankind, defying space, spans con-
tinents and oceans by word of mouth.
It is the story of a dreamer whose crude toyings
with a soap-box eventuated in a mechanism that en-
ables the President of the United States at will to
commune through the air with tens of millions of his
fellow-citizens.
It is the story of him who etched the human
voice and taught the plowboy to whistle grand
opera.
It is the story of a practical idealist who is mak-
ing child life safer, surer and sweeter.
FOREWOED
It is above all the story of the illimitable possi-
bilities of America for the youth in whom the divine
spark flickers, no matter how lowly or how alien his
origin.
Emile Berliner's story is the story of the micro-
phone, without which neither modern telephony nor
its companion in magic, radio broadcasting, would
have been possible. It is the story of the indestruc-
tible "lateral cut" disk record which brings Caruso
and GaUi-Curci, and John McCormack and phil-
harmonic orchestras, into the humblest home. It
is the story of the movement which led to the general
pasteurization of milk through the adoption of
government standards.
It is the story of a restlessly active spirit in the
endless kingdom of the unexplored, a spirit whom
age seems powerless to curb, for, at seventy-five,
Emile Berliner is still discovering and inventing.
The diamond jubilee of his fruitful life "witnessed the
addition of "acoustic tiles" to the scroll of his con-
structive works. His extraordinary vision and
unusual aural sense are unimpaired; his physical
powers and genial nature, of pristine buoyancy. It
would be a rash prophet who would predict that
Emile Berliner is an extinct volcano. From that
Vesu\'ius the world is entitled to expect yet other
eruptions.
This "Life" is essentially the chronicle of a
hero of peace unsung and unheralded. That the
story of Emile Berliner is a closed book to the
FOREWORD
large majority of his fellow- Americans is evi-
dence that self-effacement is not altogether a lost
art in our Age of Advertisement.
The year 1926 marks the Fiftieth Anniversary
of Bell's invention of the telephone. It is appropri-
ate that the golden jubilee of that boon to human
progress should see tardy justice done to the one
who contributed effectively to its perfection.
F. W. W,
Washington, B. C,
July 1, 1926.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Boyhood in Germany 1
II To THE Land of Dreams 13
III The Making of an American ... 20
IV A Rolling Stone 31
V The Spirit of 1876 42
VI Conception of the Telephone ... 51
VII Birth op the Telephone .... 58
VIII Berliner Sets to Work 67
IX From Soap-Box to Microphone ... 79
X Berliner Files His Caveat .... 88
XI The Continuous Current Transformer 94
/^ XII Berliner Joins the Bell Company . . 102
-^ XIII Berliner Completes the Telephone . 118
XIV The Telephone Fights for Its Life . 133
XV The United States Versus Emilb Ber-
liner 140
XVI The Vindication of Emile Berliner . 148
XVII Berliner Takes the Transmitter to
Europe . . . ..... 155
XVIII Holding Communion With Immortality 168
XIX Birth of the Talking Machine . . . 175
XX Berliner Invents the Gramophone . 183
XXI Etching the Human Voice .... 193
XXII Germany Welcomes the Gramophone . 202
XXIII The World Set to Music 217
XXIV Berliner's Contribution to Public
Health 234
XXV Berliner and Radio 251
XXVI Emile Berliner To-day , .... 272
CONTENTS— CowcWg^
CHAPTEE PAGE
XXVII An Inventor's Human Side .... 287
XXVIII Berlinee Peers into the Future . . 297
APPENDICES
I Berliner's Caveat Describing the Micro-
phone 309
II Final Development of the Blake Trans-
mitter . » . 314
III A Tribute to Emile Berliner . . . 320
IV A Specimen of Berliner's ** Health
Education" Bulletins . « . . 323
V The Scientific Side of Music . » . . 328
yi Wonders v « « . r « v -r * 333
Index < ^ y. e -• >: s ^^ x • 339
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIOXS
Emile Berliner Frontispiece
Facing page
Berliner's Playground When a Boy in Hanover 14
Mr. Berliner's Mother and Father ... 15
Telegram Sent on Emile Berliner's Arrival in
the United States 38
Mr. Berliner in 1872 38
Store in Washington ^Tiere Mr. Berliner
Clerked 39
First Bell Telephone, June, 1875 .... 70
BeU's Magneto System, 1876 .... 70
Bell's Magneto Telephone, 1877 .... 71
Bell's Magneto Telephone System in 1877 . . 71
Microphone of March 4, 1877 98
Microphone of Berliner's Caveat, April 14, 1877 98
Bell-Berliner System 99
Berliner's Battery System 99
Letter from Telephone Company of New York
Introducing Emile Berliner to the Bell
Group 126
Letter from Mr. Hubbard . . •., :. . 127
Gardiner Greene Hubbard in 1876 . . . 127
Letter from Theodore N. Vail .... 156
Theodore N. Vail 156
James J. Storrow, Gugliemo Marconi, Alex-
ander Graham Bell, Major-General George
0. Squire 157
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS
Facing Page
First Disk Talking Machine (Gramophone) . 180
Gramophone Sound Tracings, Gramophone Re-
producer, Gramophone Recorder . . . 181
Laboratory Force of Emile Berliner in 1888 . 210
1485 Columbia Road 211
Professor Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von
Helmholtz, Doctor Ernest C. Schroeder,
Henrich Hertz, Honorable Herbert C.
Hoover 242
Letter from Hermann von Helmholtz . . . 243
Radio Central of the Radio Corporation of
America on Long Island 268
Elliott Cresson Gold Medal 269
Mr. Berliner in Front of Microphone at WRC
Broadcasting Station 290
Mr. Berliner among Children of Public Health
Class 291
EMILE BERLINER
EMILE BERLINER
CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD IlSr GERMANY
IMTO that Germany which gave Emile Berliner
birth on May 20, 1851, the cult of militarism had
come, but not conquered. Men were goose-stepped,
but the Mailed Fist was not enthroned. Germany
for the most part was what Lord Palmerston called
*'that damned land of professors."
Liberalism and learning were in the air. The
revolution of 1848 had just been w^aged. The Ger-
man people were taking to heart the admonition of
Fichte, the philosopher, who, in his Addresses to
the Nation following the Napoleonic humiliation,
admonished his countrjTnen to "replace what they
had lost in physical resources by moral strength."
The University of Berlin, founded by Fichte, vou
Humboldt and Schleiermacher in 1813, was in the
heyday of its consecrated mission — the inculcation
of the doctrine that public education is the true basis
of national greatness.
The flower of German industrial might was bud-
1
EMILE BERLINER
ding. It "vvas in 1S51 — the year of Emile Berliner's
birth — that Alfred Knipp, an obscure Rhenish steel-
maker of Essen, electrified the manufacturing uni-
verse by exhibiting at the great Crystal Palace Ex-
hibition in London an ingot of steel weighing two
and one-half tons. Germany stood on the threshold
of a new birth, destined within a generation to be
perverted to the purposes of an insensate imperial-
ism.
In the west of Germany nestled the independent
and peaceful little Kingdom of Hanover, pawn of
Prussian, French and English dynasties throughout
an embattled century. Successively an electorate
and a kingdom, and chiefly composed of territories
which once belonged to the dukes of Brunswick,
Hanover was finally erected into a sovereign realm
in 181-i, after "VTaterloo. George V, son of Ernest
Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, ascended the throne
as King of Hanover during the year in which Emile
Berliner was bom.
The capital city bore the Kingdom's own name.
The Hanover in which Emile first glimpsed the light
was a placid community of winding streets, grim
castles, quaint buildings, and Gemi'dliliclikeit, It
had its court, its garrison, its Anglicized aristoc-
racy, its rather exclusive culture, which included
an especially pure t^'pe of German speech for which
Hanover is famous to this day, and an Institute of
Technology that was a center of German engineer-
ing progress.
BOYHOOD IN GEE^IAXY
Sir "William Herschel, ''who pierced the barriers
of Heaven" with his telescopes, was a native son of
Hanover. Three or four years before Emile Ber-
liner was bom there, another Hannoveraner came to
earth, who was doomed to strike terror to the hearts
of men as Berliner was destined to gladden them.
His name was Paul von Hindenburg. How vastly
different became the chosen paths of these two boys
of Hanover, both still alive, and on active service,
though septuagenarians! Hindenburg selected the
field of Mars as his life avocation and strewed it,
before he quit it, baffled and broken, with more of
human misery and devastation than war had ever
caused before. Berliner was marked for better
things. That Divinity which shapes our ends or-
dained that man-ennobling, not man-killing, works
should tax his ingenious energies.
To Samuel Berliner, a small Hanover merchant,
and his good wife, Sarah Fridman Berliner, there
was born a t^-pically large German family of eleven
children. They inhabited a floor of a humble four-
story stone building, of which Hanover's bended
streets contained many equally inconspicuous.
Emile was the fourth child. From his father, a
Talmudic scholar of deeply religious fervor, Emile
inherited a sense of logic and a respect for biblical
teaching. From his mother, a daughter of Cux-
haven, where the Elbe empties into the sea, the boy
subconsciously imbibed a wistful longing for the
fuller life that beckoned from across the Atlantic^
4 EMILE BERLINER
Through the city of Hanover the River Leine threads
its lazy course. On one of its bridges Emile Ber-
liner often would stand in soliloquy, watching the
softly rippling current as if crystal-gazing into a
beyond he hoped some day to encounter at close
range.
The province of Hanover had far too stirring
a military history to be devoid of martial pride.
The older generation of its menfolk, in Emile Ber-
liner's youth, consisted of those whose fathers had
marched with Bliicher to overwhelm Napoleon.
Theirs were memories and traditions not easily
forsaken. One of Emile 's school-teachers, a hot-
blooded patriot, celebrated his own birthday each
year by dispensing with class work and devoting the
day to a perfer\id glorification of the Battle of
Waterloo. "Look at those Hanoverians!" ex-
claimed Bonaparte, observing their irresistible ad-
vance, as the schoolmaster of Hanover depicted it.
*'You must grow up to be like those soldiers!" the
teacher would thunder at his awe-struck class.
For one whole week of every year Hanover gave
itself over to the dehghts and glories of the Schiit-
zenfest (sharpshooters' festival), a survival of me-
dieval glory. The city donned gala attire. At sun-
up, before the door of every burgher who was a
member of the Scluitzenverein, there would be a rat-
tle of drums to waken him. Soon after da^^i Hanover
was alive "\\'ith riflemen, hilariously ready for the
great event of each day — a parade to the shooting
BOYHOOD IN GERMANY
range in the meadows on the fringe of the city.
There all day long and into the night the populace
would sing and romp and eat and drink, turning a
nominally military affair into what it really was — a
merrymaking carnival. At the end of the week, fol-
lowing daily contests in markmanship, the cham-
pion sharpshooters was crowned sch'dtzenlidnig
(king of sharpshooters), and he remained hero of
Hanover till a rival robbed him of his laurels a year
later.
King George of Hanover was blind, but insisted
upon all the spectacular honors that were his royal
prerogative, though he could only hear, and not see,
them. He and his Queen were greatly beloved by
the Hanoverian people. The road to their Schloss
was a noble highway along which, for the length of
a mile, four giant rows of linden trees separated the
thoroughfare into different divisions of travel. On
"King's birthday" there was general holiday and
a great to-do in Hanover. Shops and houses were
gaily illuminated. There was much eating and even
more drinking. The troops turned out in gala ac-
couterments. Emile Berliner, like the other young-
sters of Hanover, was unfailingly impressed by the
gorgeous mounted band, that was uniformed in shin-
ing silver armor and led the King's bodyguard of
prancing cavalry. Hanover was famed for its fine
horses. The pick of its breeds was always pre-
served for the King's bandsmen and guard. All
Hanoverians swelled with pride whenever they told
EMILE BERLINER
that the six tawny-colored horses that drew Queen
Victoria's royal carriage on state occasions in Lon-
don were Hanover-bred.
The blind King 's affliction was a boon to the peo-
ple, in that it developed in him a great fondness for
music, of which the Hanoverians became the bene-
ficiaries. Each year the King contributed a gener-
ous sum from his personal fortune so that the citi-
zens of Hanover might enjoy the best music at the
Royal Opera for almost next to nothing.
Since time immemorial German towns and cities,
even small communities, have prided themselves
upon their fine city or state theaters and opera-
houses. In the case of Residenzstadt (royal capi-
tal) like Hanover, these buildings are veiy beautiful.
Emile Berliner's youthful mind was vastly im-
pressed by the architectural splendor of the Han-
over Opernliaus, and particularly by its gorgeous
frescoed curtain depicting the Sun God, Apollo,
mounting his chariot for the sunrise.
When Napoleon humbled Prussia after the battle
of Jena, he looted the country of many of its choice
works of art. Among the things he carted off to the
Louvre in Paris was the Hanover opera-house cur-
tain. After Waterloo, the French were despoiled
of their ill-gotten gains, and Apollo was restored
to his original place in Hanover. There he still
hangs.
One of those who availed herself liberally and
regularly of the opportunities afforded by the Han-
BOYHOOD IN GERMANY
over royal opera was Sarah. Berliner, mother of
Emile. As that child of the Elbe passed on to her
son a longing for life oversea, so she instilled in him
a love for music. Asked to-day to name his boyhood
hobby, Emile Berliner invariably responds: ''A
craze for music. " It must have been the mainspring
of his inspiration to invent the gramophone. At
boarding school, Emile used to eavesdrop outside
the rooms of wealthier boys who could afford piano
lessons and hum the pieces they practised. A fond-
ness for classical music abides with him.
Hanover pursued the even tenor of its way, a
prosperous province of nearly two million souls,
but as Emile Berliner entered upon his 'teens the
rumble of battle echoed menacingly across the fron-
tier from Prussia. Bismarck was embarking upon
his trilogy of wars that were to unify Germany into
a military empire and launch her upon the aggres-
sive career of a Weltmacht. In 1864 Denmark was
assaulted and humbled, and her fair provinces of
Schleswig and Holstein annexed to Prussia. In
1866, Austria was earmarked for attack. King
George of Hanover decided to align his fortunes
with Austria, whereupon the Prussians entered and
occupied Hanover. The Hanoverians fought
bravely, as their forebears did at Waterloo, and de-
feated the Prussians at Langensalza, but two daj's
later the tide of battle turned against them and
King George's men were compelled to surrender.
That was on June 29, 1866. Three months after-
8 EMILE BERLINER
ward Bismarck annexed Hanover to Prussia over
the futile protest the blind King addressed to
Europe. Thenceforward George V and his house
were exiles on the hospitable soil of Austria.
Emile Berliner had finished a four-year course
at a boarding-chool in Wolfenbiittel, a town about
two hours from Hanover by rail, a year before these
fateful events transpired. The Prussian invasion
photographed itself indelibly upon his young mind.
It recalled itself vividly in 1914 when, in common
with many Americans of German origin, Berliner
was horrified by the invasion of Belgium, though
the Prussians of 1866 had not hacked their way
through Hanover.
Emile was clerking in a dry goods store when the
Uhlans came to his native city. First there were
but three of them, mounted and carrying a flag of
truce. They were the advance guard sent to ask
the burgomaster of Hanover whether there would
be resistance to the Prussian troops standing in
force on the outskirts of the capital. Berliner saw
the Uhlans clattering through the street, each brand-
ishing a pistol, for they evidently feared attack.
Hanover was in no position to defend itself, so
the Uhlans took back word fo their commander that
the city could be occupied without danger of a fight.
Then the Prussians poured in. Troops were quar-
tered in the building where Emile worked. It was
a peaceful occupation. But it sowed the seeds of a
hatred that endures in the older generation of Han-
BOYHOOD IN GERMANY
overian breasts to this day. It was not until forty-
seven years later, in consequence of one of those
strokes of matrimonial statecraft by which kings
and queens patch up international differences, that
the old house of Hanover, the Cumberlands, con-
sented to have anything to do with the Hohenzol-
lerns. On May 24, 1913, the young Duke Ernest
August of Brunswick, *'heir to the Hanoverian
throne," was married to Princess Victoria Louise
of Prussia, only daughter of the haughty German
Emperor. There was love-feasting and burying of
the hatchet at the Royal Castle of Berlin — the
author of this book was present — but the Hanover-
ians will never forget that it was overbearing Prus-
sia ^hat humiliated and dethroned their beloved
blind king and his gracious consort and on Septem-
ber 20, 1866, of painful memory, snuffed out the
old kingdom of Hanover and incorporated it within
the territory of Prussia. If departed monarchs ever
turn in their royal graves for joy, the old blind King
of Hanover must have had his moment of vengeful
rejoicing when William II, last of the Hohen-
zoUerns, ignominiously fled his throne and his coun-
try in the ides of November, 1918.
Emile Berliner was one of thirty-five boy stu-
dents at the Samsonschule in Wolfenbiittel. He was
graduated in 1865 at the age of fourteen and has
never been to school since. The grounding he re-
ceived there, as was the invariable rule in German
primary schools, was exceedingly thorough,
10 EMILE BERLINER
He was a good, though not a particularly bril-
liant pupil. His Ahgangs-Zeugniss (final report),
reveals that he received * ' excellents " for de-
portment, industry, application, orderliness and
Bible history, but only "very goods," the second
highest marks, for history, geography, reading, Ger-
man, French, singing and gymnastics. Evidently
Emile had either small talent for or slight interest
in natural history or English, for he scored only
** goods" in those branches after four years under
Herr Schuldirektor Doctor Ehrenberg at Wolfen-
biittel.
In two classes young Berliner was highly pro-
ficient— drawing and penmanship. He was by far
the best draftsman in the Samsonschule. His free-
hand copies of drawings were almost lithographic.
His handwriting is still of the ornate Spencerian
type that was considered a great accomplishment
in those days. On the occasion of Emile 's annual
visits to his home in Hanover, during his four years
at Wolfenbiittel, he would exhibit with deep pride
a set of uncommonly neat copy-books. They are
still preserved by him and are proofs of an indus-
trious, if not an illustrious, school career.
Emile Berliner's life as a breadwinner was now
upon him. His parents were hard put to it to
provide adequately for their extensive brood of
youngsters. Emile, it was decided, must shift for
himself. He found work as a printer's devil in a
job-printing establishment. It required him to be
BOYHOOD IN GERMANY 11
up and doing winter mornings before daylight and
to break the ice in the basin before he could wash
his face and hands. By seven o'clock, following
a crust and coffee, he had swept out the printery,
and tidied up the type-fonts and hand-presses for
a new day's grind. At nine o'clock he was sent out
to buy the workmen's ziveites Fruhstuch (second
breakfast) of beer, cheese and rye bread. Ten
months as a printer's devil without pay except ex-
perience were to Emile 's credit when he determined
that the printing trade was not to his liking. He
had learned some t5T)esetting, but was tired of work-
ing for nothing, and found himself a job as clerk
in a dry-goods store.
Now a lad of sixteen, Berliner's mind for the
first time turned to the inventive. It was the day-
by-day handling of bolts of colored fabric that first
brought it out. He became interested in the methods
by which textiles might be woven. In his free hours
at home he evolved a weaving machine. It was, of
course, not an original idea. But as far as Emile
was concerned, it was an invention. Experts pro-
nounced its principle technically correct and ex-
pressed astonishment that an adolescent youth, un-
aided and without technical equipment, could have
devised so practical a mechanism. They told Sam-
uel and Sarah Berliner that their boy Emile was
ein genialer Kerl — a clever fellow.
Young Berliner plodded on, an industrious, seri-
ous-minded, receptive, observant and rather reticent
12 EMILE BERLINER
youth. German lads did not go in for sports in the
'sixties. G>TQnastics represented the first and last
word in games. Emile derived his chief pleasure
from reading. Night-time, snuggled down into his
feather bed beneath a red and black patchwork quilt
and by the light of a kerosene lamp, he was accus-
tomed to devour Robinson Crusoe and The Last of
the Mohicans. The wind whipping across the attic
roof immediately above him gave frequent reality
to the romantic tales which have fired the imagi-
nations of boys in so many lands. Of those
two stories of adventure Emile seemed never to
tire. He read them dozens of times, and knew whole
passages by heart. Probably without his realizing
it, Defoe and Fenimore Cooper between them
played a subtly vital part, with their classic nar-
ratives of self-reliance in new lands, in preparing
Emile Berliner for the eventful life about to open
up for him, in a distant climei
CHAPTER n
TO THE LAND OF DREAMS
FROM the moment the ''Forty-Eighters," the
militant Germans of whom Carl Schurz is the
most famous, began their great exodus to the United
States after the revolution against Prussian autoc-
racy, the eyes of young Germany turned with ever
increasing longing toward the New World. Be-
tween 1860 and 1870 there poured in from the
Fatherland, a stream of immigrants that was limited
only by the capacity of steamships to bring them
across the Atlantic. Sturdy Germans, whose
progenitors were pioneers on American soil along
vnth English, Scottish, Irish and Dutch settlers as
long ago as the seventeenth century, leavened our
citizenship everywhere.
By 1861 they were already so large in number
and so impregnated with American ideals that whole
"German regiments" were formed for service in the
Union Army during the Civil War. General Franjz
Sigel commanded a brigade of men who were al-
most exclusively of Teutonic birth. Carl Schurz
was one of Sigel 's leaders. Missouri, in the tragic
hours of secession, wavered for a while between
13
14 EMILE BERLINER
loyalty to the Union and sympathy with the Confed-
eracy. It was due in no small degree to its numer-
ous German- American element that the great bor-
der state was saved for the cause that Abraham
Lincoln espoused. Carl Schurz lived in Missouri
and afterward represented his state in the United
States Senate from 1869 to 1875.
Thoughts and dreams of America — das Land der
unhegrensten Moglichheiten (the land of unlimited
possibilities), as it came to be called in more modem
times — now were flitting through Emile Berliner's
head. Like all young Hanoverians, he loathed
Prussian militarism, under whose boot-heel the
independence .of his native land lay crushed. Den-
mark had been bullied, beaten and despoiled of her
fairest provinces. Imperial Austria, as the price
of annihilating defeat at Koniggratz, was cowed
into the ignominy of a Prussian vassal. The Ger-
man Confederation having been annulled, the North
German Confederation had been set up under the
spurred and helmeted supremacy of Prussia. Han-
over, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Frankfort and other
provinces were deprived of their sovereignty and
herded like sheep into the Prussian realm. Bis-
marck ruled at Berlin, drunk with power and suc-
cessive triumphs in the fields of war and statecraft.
Such was the depressing vision that loomed be-
fore the eyes of upgrowing Germans in the years
of Emile Berliner's budding manhood. It was not
a vista to stir the imagination of a lad in whom the
Berliner 's I'lavurouxd AVhex a Boy in Haxovek
w
TO THE LAND OF DREAMS 15
fires of constructive achievement were, subcon-
sciously, aglow and so soon to be kindled into a
flame.
The alumnus of Wolfenbiittel, now in his nine-
teenth year and eking out a drab existence as a
dry-goods clerk, first had his day-dreaming
turned concretely toward the Golden West by
the return to Hanover of an old family friend. Na-
than Gotthelf had emigrated to the United States
many years before and was now a small, though
prosperous, merchant in Washington, D. C. Gott-
helf came back to Germany in 1869, to visit his na-
tive haunts and spread the gospel of the El Dorado
that awaited exploration and conquest everywhere
in ''free America."
His story fascinated Emile Berliner. The youth
determined that if parental consent could be ob-
tained, he would cross the Atlantic at the earliest
possible moment. It was not long afterward that in
one of the humble homes of Hanover a group of
wide-eyed youths, consumed with envy of the good
fortune about to overtake their most enterprising
comrade, gathered around a table laden all over its
checkered cloth with potato-pancakes, rye bread,
Swiss cheese and beer. In the midst of his com-
panions sat Emile Berliner, hero of the occasion.
It was an Ahschiedsfeier (farewell party) in his
honor. He was about to take the long, long leap
and seek his fortune overseas.
Nathan Gotthelf promised to give Emile work in
16 EMILE BERLINER
the little dry-goods store on Seventh Street, Wash-
ington, immediately upon the lad's arrival in Amer-
ica. It would be a modest beginning, but it was an
assured one, and amid friends. The Berliner fam-
ily council had consented, and now Emile was to
join the adventuring throng that was turning its
back on militarized Germany. It would be an in-
structive thing if some day it could be ascertained,
in measurable terms, what nineteenth-century Ger-
many might have become if so many of her intrepid
young spirits had not been driven away by the de-
pressing influence of the Prussian goose-step.
Emile Berliner was of military age when he
elected to become an Amerikaner. Bismarck, Molt-
ke, Roon and the puppet King of Prussia, soon to
be the self -consecrated Kaiser Wilhelm ''the
Great," were busily making their battle toilet for
Prussia's next war of conquest — the contest with
France. Young Berliner had passed with flying
colors the examination for the Einjdhrige-Freiwill-
ige (one-year volunteer) term in the Prussian
Army. Under this system, in vogue until the out-
break of the World War, a young German was ab-
solved from the onerous obligations of three, later
two, consecutive years of service in barracks dur-
ing early manhood. All lads of adequate mental
equipment and of even moderately well-to-do fam-
ily took the Einjdhrige-Freiwillige examination. It
was a certificate of exceptional culture.
Although the authorities were keeping minute
TO THE LAND OF DREAMS 17
tab on every ounce of Prussian military resources,
for the war with France was to break forth in all
its fury within a few months, April 27, 1870, found
Emile Berliner unmolestedly preparing to shake the
dust of Germany from his feet. He was now on the
threshold of his nineteenth birthday. It was a tear-
ful farewell he took of his parents, brothers, sisters
and cronies. His father he was never to see again.
Upon his head the devoted mother, Sarah Berliner,
laid a hand that betokened unuttered prayers for
Emile 's spiritual salvation and material welfare in
the land of his impending adoption. The lad's heart
was heavier than he cared to show before kith and
kin. He was face to face with an incalculable future.
Emotion subdued all inclination to elation, though
inwardly Emile thirsted for the new experiences
that were beckoning to him in the great republic
across three thousand miles of salt water.
A depressing mist was falling as Emile stepped,
baggage laden, from the old-fashioned train that
brought him from Hanover to Hamburg. The famous
Elbe port had not become the mighty world harbor
into which the genius of Albert Ballin was destined
to convert it, but the argosies of the Hamburg-
Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft al-
ready traversed the seven seas, and from the same
far-flung waters came to Hamburg the ships of all
the nations. "My Field is the "World" has been the
*'Hapag's" official motto since the Hamburg- Amer-
ican line's foundation. That might have been the
18 EMILE BERLINER
slogan on Emile's coat-of-arms, too, had the Ber-
liners boasted a family crest, for the intrepid young
Hanoverian who was setting out for new land that
day in April, 1870, was himself destined to girdle
the globe, though in other ways than Hamburg's
ships.
Emile, who had never seen ocean ships or
sniffed the air of the sea, was deeply impressed
by the forest of masts that always dominates the
perspective in Hamburg. He speedily found his
bearings. He was electrified by the consciousness
that with every step America was growing nearer.
The realization made his crude baggage seem lighter
as he trudged for endless cobblestoned blocks har-
borward and to the water's edge.
At the Hamburg-American line wharves an im-
mense hustle and bustle raged. Great hulks of
longshoremen, men reared to the hardy trade of the
sea — Germans, Frisians, Helgolanders, Dutchmen,
Danes, Swedes, Norwegians — worked like beavers
loading and unloading cargo from vessels moored
to the docks in a line longer than the eye could fol-
low. Wharves were not of steel and concrete in
those days, and through the gaping cracks of the
unhewn floors of the docks where he was now
arrived, Emile could see and hear the water of the
Elbe splashing and swishing against the piles, and
feel those timber pinions swaying now and then as
the water gurgled in with a bit of a surge. The
whole scene filled the Hanoverian emigrant boy,
TO THE LAND OF DREAMS 19
land-lubber as be was, with a solemn wonder.
But it was athrob with life — the life into which he
felt he was about to plunge — so wonder melted
speedily into enthusiasm, and he became conscious
of a leaping anxiety to clamber aboard his ship of
destiny.
There she was, tied to the dock, far down the
row of barges and cargo boats crunching at the pier,
and standing forth a queen among her ignobler
sister craft, for she was the Eammonia and bore the
proud name of the patron goddess of the Free Han-
seatic City of Hamburg. From her black and red
smokestack smoke floated lazily, indicating that the
H ammonia's, furnaces were alight and her boilers
ready to propel her on still another transatlantic
journey.
The Eammonia glowed before Emile Berliner's
enraptured gaze the embodiment of all his boyhood
dreams of a great ship. Brass rails agleam — spot-
less cleanliness — ship-shapeness all about. The
Eammonia was not the liner de luxe of this ostenta-
tious age. But she was a Leviathan of her time,
and, of course, in Emile 's eyes, a miracle ship. He
mounted the gangplank that led into the second
cabin, and Germany was bereft of a genius.
CHAPTER III
THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN
OCEAN greyhounds in the 'seventies had only
the speed of bulldogs, and needed just as
much tenacity. They plowed the Atlantic between
Hamburg and New York laboriously in weeks, not
days, and the Hammonia, with Emile Berliner
aboard, required for her voyage exactly a fortnight.
It was a stormy crossing. Second-cabin accom-
modations fifty-five years ago were inferior to
steerage facilities to-day. Humble as were Emile 's
home comforts, he missed them sadly.
He and his shipmates had everything in common.
Like himself, they were about to become prospectors
in the gold-fields of Opportunity. Their days and
nights aboard ship were weird and wonderful hours
of speculation and anticipation. Some of the
Hammonia' s emigrant cargo were more fortunate
than young Berliner. They had flesh and blood
awaiting them in America, and homes into which the
new arrivals would be welcomed, literally, as
brothers, sisters, sons or daughters. Parents were
aboard, too, bound for loving firesides established
by pioneering and subsequently fortunate offspring
20
MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 21
in American town or country. Emile's lot was to
be cast among friends. But beyond that lay a
vacuum. He was of stout heart. The answer to a
question once leveled at him by this chronicler is
significant. *'"What was your chief emotion as a
poor German boy about to be put dowoi, a complete
stranger, on United States soil?" Quoth Berliner:
** Anxiety to know how long it would take me to be-
come a thorough American I ' '
The Goddess of Liberty was not enlightening the
world in the days when the Hammonia slipped into
New York harbor. Nor was there that ultra-
modern institution, the immigration quota. Amer-
ica in those halcyon times welcomed to her capacious
bosom the oppressed, the ambitious, the liberty-lov-
ing of all climes, regardless of whether they were
Nordics, Latins or Orientals. Our industries were
not even infant industries; they were little more
than in the conception stage. The illimitable
wealth of our mines and agricultural fields had not
been scratched. Railroads were in the chrysalis
phase. The clamor was for unskilled labor to hasten
the colossal economic development on the verge
of which the giant republic trembled. Europe was
the bottomless well from which the United States
proceeded eagerly to draw its human supplies. On
they came — in torrents — in the 'seventies, and the
'eighties, and the 'nineties, and in the early decades
of the new century, till we became a satiated, and,
as some of our detractors aver, a selfish, folk, bar-
22 EMILE BERLINER
ring our gates and proclaiming that America was
no longer an asylum. Tempora mutantur, nos et
mutamur in illis,. .■ . .
Apollo, the Sun God, whose allegorical splendor
as reflected on the great Hanover opera-house
curtain is one of Emile's indelible memories,
was holding watch and ward over him, for the
Jersey coast was bathed in golden sunshine as Ber-
liner's ship docked at Hoboken. The young emi-
grant's English vocabulary was primitive, and he
was happy to be met by a New York acquaintance
of his Washington benefactor. Unfamiliarity •with
a strange country's language is an appalling and a
depressing thing. He who is responsible for this
record endured that experience in Berliner's native
land of Germany, though under immensely less dis-
advantageous conditions than those Emile now
faced. Men j^earn at such times for Volapuk or
some other universal medium more effective than
the sign language.
Emile was awed by the bigness of New York,
although there were no Woolworth Towers then,
nor Brooklyn bridges, nor subways, nor even cable
cars. The horse was still king. Ferry-boats are
the only survivors of the Gotham that Berliner first
knew — Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. He
expressed a desire to reach Washington as soon as
possible. So, after half a day of itinerant sight-
seeing, he was put on the train for the capital, as
green as the Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware
MAKING OF AN AMEEICAN 23
grass he was soon to inspect from his first American
car-window. To Washington, the telegraph carried
the following terse warning of an impending event :
New York, May 11, 1870
Messrs. Gotthelf, Behrend and Co.,
818 Seventh Street,
Washington, D. C.
Berliner will start most likely to-night or to-
morrow morning.
Jacob Davidson
Berliner has lived to put so much of sunshine
into the dark places of the world that one is often
constrained to think his inspiration came from the
weather conditions that first greeted him here. His
most vivid impressions of early hours and days in
America are recollections of super-abundant sun-
shine. He had come out of North Germany, which
has its moments of sunshine, but its sieges of gray,
damp, bleak and cheerless atmosphere. In his first
letter to his parents — foreign postage in 1870 was
forty cents the half ounce — Emile mentioned the con-
stant sunlight as one of America's principal char-
acteristics. No doubt it lifted up his soul in his
occasional spells of homesickness or other depres-
sion. He thought it accounted for the omnipresent
optimism in the American nature.
It was to the sordid Washington of reconstruc-
tion days that Emile Berliner came on May 12, 1870.
The first presidency of General Ulysses S. Grant was
in its tempestuous midst. It was the era of the
24 EMILE BERLINER
carpetbaggers. The South, still bleeding and sullen,
failed to find in Grant, the president, the generous
conqueror who declined Lee's sword at Appomattox.
''At Appomattox," says David Saville Muzzey, his-
tory mentor of so many thousands of American
schoolboys, "Grant had been noble. Yet as Presi-
dent he upheld the disgraceful negro governments
of the Reconstruction Act, and constantly furnished
troops to keep the carpetbag and scalawag officials
in power in the South, in order to provide Republi-
can votes for congressmen and presidential elec-
tors."
Not only were Reconstruction methods keeping
open the Civil War wounds of the South, but politi-
cal corruption everywhere was rife. Muzzey
teaches that
"Probably the tone of public morality was never
so low in all of our country's history, before or
since, as it was in the years of Grant's Administra-
tion (1869-1877), although a more honest President
never sat in the White House. Large contracts for
supplies of food, clothing, ammunition and equip-
ment had to be filled on short notice. Men grew
rich on fraudulent deeds. Our state legislatures
and municipal governments fell into the hands of
corrupt 'rings.' Corruption reached the highest
offices of state. Grant's secretary of war, William
W. Belknap, resigned in order to escape impeach-
ment for sharing the graft from the dishonest man-
agement of army posts in the West. The Presi-
dent's private secretary, Babcock, was implicated
in frauds which robbed the government of its rev-
enue tax on whisky. Western stage-coach lines, in
league with corrupt post-office officials, made false
MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 25
returns of the amount of business done along their
routes, and secured large appropriations from
Congress for carrying the mails. Members of Con-
gress so far lost their sense of official propriety as
to accept large amounts of railroad stock as
'presents' from men who wanted legislative favors
for their roads."
That was the America which Emile Berliner
was first to know. It is probably a blessing that
neither his knowledge of the English language nor
his predilections permitted him to become contami-
nated by the atmosphere in which he found himself
at Washington, else it might have turned the young
German idealist in disgust from the America which
had tempted him away from native heath.
Emile set diligently about the task he con-
sidered to be paramount — to make himself *'a
good American" with the least possible delay. The
conquest of our language became his first objective.
He listened to it intently in the Gotthelf store. He
read Hawthorne and Longfellow. He studied the
Quarterly Reviews of England in the old Y. M. C. A.
reading-rooms at Ninth and D Streets, not far from
his place of work in Washington. His literary bent
was in the direction of the serious. He worshiped
indiscriminately in churches of all denominations, in
order to hear eloquent sermons and accustom his
ear to good English. At his place of employment
some of the wrapping-paper consisted of surplus
copies of the Congressional Record, then printed
and sold by a private firm, Statesmen in the Eecon-
26 EMILE BERLINER
struction era were as loquacious as they are to-day.
The Congressional Record was correspondingly
bulky. Emile took copies regularly to his lodgings
and from them imbibed a familiarity with the ora-
torical style of those florid days.
Having lived to see Washington ''the city of
magnificent distances," and having himself become
one of its important property-owners, Emile Ber-
liner is fond of comparing the national capital of
to-day with the Wasliington of the Grant era. Then
it was an overgrown, unkempt community of sixty
thousand, giving small promise of conversion into
the splendid world metropolis which, despite the
continuing excrescence of Pennsylvania Avenue, it
is to-day. When John Hay came to Washington as
an assistant private secretary to President Lincoln,
he wrote :
"Warsaw (Illinois) dull? It shines before my
eyes like a social paradise compared Avith this miser-
able sprawling village, which imagines itself a city
because it is wicked, as a boy thinks he is a man
when he smokes and swears. I wish I could by wish-
ing find myself in Warsaw. ' '
Berliner's early Washington was a town of
horse-cars as the sole means of public transporta-
tion. The gorgeous barouche and pair was the
limousine of the day. Colored coachmen and foot-
men were the quintessence of elegance. Gas was the
most luxurious form of illumination, and farmers
coming to city hotels occasionally blew it out and
MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 27
were asphyxiated. Washington had no sewage or
filtration of water. At meals Potomac River water
was served in china pitchers so that those about to
reduce the invisible supply of microbes might not be
able to detect their presence in the muddy yellow
fluid. The city was full of typhoid and malaria.
There were no shade trees, such as now make the
great avenues of the capital uniquely lovely, except
in the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution and
the Soldiers' Home. To both of those parks people
would flee for relief from the heat of the equatorial
climate of the District of Columbia. Rock Creek
Park did not yet exist, except as a wilderness.
Gaunt telegraph poles, from which wires inter-
laced the streets in all directions, accentuated the
city's crude exterior. Italian organ-grinders, A\dth
their dancing monkeys, were popular attractions.
Their canned music consisted mostly of Civil War
songs like Marching Through Georgia and Captain
Jinks, for the martial spirit w^as still abroad through
Washington and the North. As fervently was Dixie
sung and played throughout the seemingly irrecon-
cilable South.
President Grant, short, stocky and democratic,
was a familiar figure on Pennsylvania Avenue in the
afternoons, as he took his constitutional, hands
clasped behind his back, unfailingly accompanied by
his cigar, and minus guards of any kind. Through
the windows of the swagger hotels of the capital,
now ramshackle survivors of their ancient glory,
28 EMILE BERLINER
lazy politicians in whiskers and wide-brimmed hats
stretched their legs by the hour, as they discussed
the state of the Union amid contests in long-distance
tobacco-spitting across the littered sidewalks of
*Hhe Avenue."
Now and then cattle would be driven through or
across that dilapidated boulevard of state. On the
southern side of the nation's Via Triumphalis
coursed a murky canal along which scows were
tediously towed. Emile Berliner thought of Hanover
and other well-kept cities in Germany, with their
civic pride and cleanliness and love of architectural
beauty, and found it difficult to reconcile the cobble-
stones, brick pavements and general primitiveness
of Washington with his preconception of the capital
of great America.
The Americanization of Emile Berliner set in
with a change in the spelling of his given name. At
birth he was christened * ' Emil, ' ' but he had been in
Washington only a few weeks when he decided to
refurbish it into ''Emile," adding the final "e" as
an Anglo-Saxon touch. He thought it would mate-
rially fortify his morale in the de-Prussianizing
process in which he now was sturdily immersed.
Berliner has always been zealously watchful that
nobody, particularly since the World War, in ad-
dressing him or referring to him in print, shall
forget that the spelling of his name is the Anglo-
Saxon Emile, and not the German Emil. One of the
considerations that impelled him to make the change
MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 29
was the marked contrast he found in America in the
treatment of yomig men. Here, he soon discovered,
they were treated as equals. In Prussia-Germany,
elders and superiors looked down upon them in a
spirit of military hauteur.
To our whimsical national habits, weird and
strange to the newcomer, Berliner steadily adjusted
liimself in Washington. An Italian street-corner
vender taught him how to eat peanuts and ba-
nanas— arts then unknowai to a German boy. Ice-
cream soda became another early accomplishment,
thanks to the ministrations of a friendly draggist
who mixed his own sirups and produced concoctions
that passed comprehension. Emile became espe-
cially fond of a mixture of coffee-sirup and choco-
late, which he himself designed in a spirit of bibulous
adventure. It eventually became popular with many
patrons of the drug-store as ''half-and-half." Ber-
liner calls it one of his first inventions.
Three years had passed, and Emile Berliner,
now at man's estate, began to think of his future.
He had no definite plans regarding it. His time in
the United States thus far had been assiduously
devoted to the earning of his living, the learning of
English and the absorption of American ideas. In
all three of those directions he made substantial
progress, except with regard to a livelihood. That
he had earned, and little more. He found time to
take up the study of music. Now and then he
thought music might become his profession. He
30 EMILE BERLINER
knew such a life would delight the mother he had left
behind in Hanover. Emile took some lessons in both
piano and violin, and still plays both of those instru-
ments. But he played by ear only. It is his strange
sort of eyesight that kept him from becoming a sight
reader of music. *'I have an unusual kind of
vision," he explains. ''If my attention is called to
one person in a group of people, I see no one else in
the group. This is the reason I never went further
in music, I couldn't see notes ahead in groups."
Berliner's gray brown eyes are almost pierc-
ing— not intimidating in their effect, as such eyes
often are, but kindly, and endowed with an intense
power of concentration. To-day, at seventy-five,
before Berliner begins to read, he takes off his
glasses. He appears to wear them principally
for decorative effect. They are nose-glasses and
dangle most of the time from the black cord which
anchors them to his person. He suffers from slight
near-sightedness, but has not needed a change of
lenses for twenty-five years. For close work, his
eyes still serve him better unaided. They seem to
have been given him to look keenly and fruitfully
into the future.
CHAPTER ly
A ROLLING STONE
EMILE BERLINER had lived in the United
States long enough at the end of three years to
imbibe the American spirit of adventure. He had
conquered our language; absorbed the habits of
young men of his age, including a predilection to
better himself; and longed for fields of conquest
other than the drab District of Columbia. National
activities, in a financial and mercantile sense, were
centered in New York City almost exclusively. To
achieve fame and fortune in the metropolis was the
goal of every ambitious American youth. They were
the times that fired Horatio A. Alger with inspira-
tion for the Oliver Optic stories — when virtue in
Broadway was still its own reward.
The year in which Berliner decided to pull up
stakes in Washington and tempt fate in New York
was a period of unparalleled crash and smash in
business America. A fainter heart than that which
beat beneath the bosom of the young Hanoverian
would have preferred the dull certainty of life along
the Potomac to the atmosphere of devastation and
depression which prevailed on the Hudson.
31
^32 EMILE BERLINER
Between 1869 and 1873 railroad building pro-
ceeded at a feverish rate in the United States. Some
twenty-four thousand miles of lines, or more than
three times as many as were built during the pre-
ceding four years, were constructed. Business was
at the high tide of prosperity. But in its wake there
ensued an orgy of wild speculation, wide-spread ex-
tension of credit and inflated values. The bubble
burst with tragic and annihilating suddenness. The
great banking house of Jay Cooke went to the wall —
an event as transcendent as would to-day be the
failure of J. P. Morgan and Company, or the Na-
tional City Bank, if so catastrophic a thing can be
imagined. Cooke 's institution had been of priceless
service in floating Union Government loans during
the Civil War. Without the bank's aid, Lincoln and
Grant could hardly have carried on.
Every money center in the land felt the shock of
the Cooke collapse. Lesser houses, caught in the
eddies of mistrust and fear which boiled up in all
directions, went under by the dozen. Many people
held Congress responsible for releasing the econom-
ic furies because of the passage of a currency bill,
known as *'the Crime of 'Seventy-Three," because
of its discrimination against the silver dollar.
Therefore both gold and silver were freely coined
on terms of parity. Either precious metal was ex-
changeable at the Treasury for an equivalent weight
in coin. That is to say, a citizen could obtain gold
coins for his silver or silver coins for his gold at the
A ROLLING STONE 33
rate of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold.
Such was the parity that William Jennings Bryan
converted into a popular political slogan in 1896,
when he sought the presidency on a ''free silver'*
platform. Bryan demanded that the ''Crime of
'Seventy-Three" should be expiated by re-legalizing
"the free and unlimited coinage of silver" at the
ratio of sixteen to one. "You shall not crucify man-
kind upon a cross of gold," he shrieked in his im-
mortal peroration at the Democratic national
convention in Chicago. Bryan was overwhelmed at
the succeeding election mainly because the country
feared a repetition of the crisis of 1873.
As always happens on these cyclonic occasions —
panics in the United States, before creation of the
Federal Eeserve system, recurred mth regularity
about every twenty years — the panic of 1873 cleared
the economic atmosphere. Sturdy oaks of commerce
and finance were brought down before the storm
spent its fury. Families which had never known
anything but affluence were reduced to poverty over-
night. Historic "Black Friday" saw the panic
raging at the zenith of its destructive force. Thence-
forward the stabilizing process set steadily in, but
the back-wash of the incidental tidal wave of bank-
ruptcy spread its ruinous effects over many years.
The panic of 1873 was one of the things known in
Emile Berliner's native country by the expressive
idiom of Kinderhrankheiten — ^the diseases of child-
hood. America was in its economic childhood —
34 EMILE BEELINER ^
undergoing its growing pains. Wall Street lived to
learn that the great upheaval was one of the most
salutary events in financial America's hectic history.
Two men emerged from the encircling gloom as
heroes and victors — Jay Gould and "Jim" Fisk,
who operated together as speculators on the right
side of the tempestuous market, especially in rail-
road ''deals."
In the business rack and ruin amid which Emile
Berliner arrived at New York for the second time
within three years, he was aware that he could not
be a chooser, though he was hardly a beggar, for he
had saved some of his meager wages as a drj^-goods
clerk in Washington. He speedily realized that he
would have to take the work he could get without
waiting for the kind he preferred. It is interesting
to note that, though now aged twenty-two, Berliner
had as yet no concrete notions whatever as to his
future. His anxieties were concerned exclusively
with the bread and butter question. He had not been
educated for a profession or any special vocation.
His equipment consisted entirely of a studious na-
ture, zest for hard work, ambition, natural intelli-
gence and ample self-confidence. Despite a distinct
trace of intuitiveness in his make-up, the inventive
streak in him had not yet shone.
Berliner was interested, but not engrossed, in
scientific achievement, and, of course, had had no
sort of preparation for it. So he turned in New
York to the first employment that came to hand. It
A ROLLING STONE 35
was of variegated hue. He sold glue. He painted
the backgrounds of enlarged tin-type portraits — his
talent for drawing stood him in stead for that
artistry. He gave German lessons. The United
States was still awed by the results of the Franco-
Prussian war and Bismarck's creation of the
German Empire by blood and iron. Americans
acquired a correspondingly new interest in the
Fatherland. There was a bull market for instruc-
tion in the language which Mark Twain described as
**the only one in the world in which you can travel
all day in one sentence mthout changing cars."
New York having failed to launch Berliner on
the tide that leads to fortune, the spirit moved him
to barken to the advice of Horace Greeley: ''Young
man, go west!" In literal truth, it was not Gree-
ley's admonition so much as an advertisement in a
New York newspaper that turned Berliner's
thoughts in the direction of the setting sun. "Mil-
waukee gents' furnishing house wants enterprising
young man to go on the road" was the seductive
legend that attracted Berliner's attention and as
promptly determined him to don the armor of a
knight of the gripsack and sample-case.
Commercial travelers were already known as
** drummers." They were the real ambassadors of
trade. Advertising, as we know it to-day, was non-
existent. The mail-order house was as undiscovered
a phenomenon as the automobile. "Drummers"
made good wages and were regarded indispensably
36 EMILE BERLINER
members of business society. Berliner applied for
the ISIilwaukee job and got it. Behind the counter at
Gotthelf, Behrend and Company's store in Wash-
ing-ton he had learned the mysteries of collars and
cuffs, neckties and suspenders, and the other habili-
ments of haberdashery. When he turned up in
Milwaukee, then almost as German a city as his na-
tive Hanover itself, his employers-to-be were agree-
ably surprised by his familiarity with the language
of the ''gents' furnishings" tribe.
Wisconsin provided young Berliner with many
reminders of the Fatherland besides its omnipresent
German population. In the first place, it was bleak
and cold — Berhner arrived from the East in a tem-
perature of thirty-three degrees below zero and with
a pair of frozen ears. The Dairy State flowed with
milk and cheese, as well as lager beer, and those
institutions helped to keep Berliner from grooving
homesick, too. His employers told him he was to
travel up and down the Mississippi River between
St. Paul and St. Louis, and out to the Missouri
River as far west as Omaha. The western spaces
were even more "open" than they are to-day.
Distances between settled communities were greater
and conditions immeasurably more primitive. The
^■' trade" Berliner was assigiied to canvass was of a
sort to test every ounce of salesmanship in his green
iftake-up. For the most part it consisted of
Da\id Harums who had gone west to grow up with
^hh- countiy and could bargain the bark off a tree.
A ROLLING STOXE 37
Travel was principally by Mississippi Eiver
barges — tedious, hot, uncomfortable and slow. Ber-
liner had to learn to speak a Avholly different brand
of American language than that he acquired on the
Atlantic seaboard. He found himself in the presence
of the mid-western drawl, and, as his wanderings
took him down river, he had to master the lingo of
the Mississippi darky, who spoke a dulcet tongue
that was all his own. Many of the rural storekeepers
to whom Berliner offered Milwaukee creations in
"gents' " finery were Mark Twain's people — the
droll, shrewd types among whom Huckleberry Finn
and Tom Sawj^er grew up. The young drummer,
with his microscopic mind, found lively amusement
in studying the Main Street types of the era.
Berliner was a satisfactory, if not a scintillating,
traveling salesman, but he did not succumb to the
lure of the Middle West. After considerably less
than a year's dabbling in ''gents' furnishings" he
retraced his steps to the East. For the third time
he arrived in New York with life stretching before
him a complete blank. Yet the rolling stone unwit-
tingly now was heading for the path along which he
was to reach a worthy destination.
The year 1875 was tapering to its end when Ber-
liner obtained work in the laboratory of Doctor
Constantine Fahlberg, an analyst of sugar by occu-
pation. While Fahlberg was respected in the
limited community which had need of his profes-
sional ser\aces, he was not looked upon as the scien-
38 EMILE BERLINER
tific genius lie later was recognized to be. It was
several years afterward that Falilberg discovered
saccharin, the intensely sweet crystalline substance
derived from coal tar and now in so common use in
both industry and medicine.
In one of Emile Berliner's scrap-books is a clip-
ping dated 1886, which contains Fahlberg's own
story of the discovery of saccharin.
It reads:
''One evening I was so interested in my labora-
tory that I forgot about supper until quite late, and
then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash
my hands. I sat down, broke a piece of bread, and
put it to my lips. It tasted unspeakably sweet. I
did not ask why it was so, probably because I
thought it was some cake or sweetmeat. I rinsed my
mouth mth Avater and dried my mustache with my
napkin, when, to my surprise, the nax-)kin tasted
sweeter than the bread. Then I was puzzled. I
again raised my goblet, and, as fortune would have
it, applied my mouth where my fingers had touched
it before. The water seemed sirup. It flashed upon
me that I was the cause of the singular universal
sweetness. I accordingly tasted the end of my
thumb, and found that it surpassed any confection-
ery I had ever eaten. I saw the whole thing at a
glance. I had discovered or made some coal tar sub-
stance which out-sugared sugar."
Fahlberg's discovery of saccharin gave him
fame. Berliner remained at the laboratory in the
humble and unromantic capacity of a general handy
man and bottle-washer. But he did improve his op-
portunities at Fahlberg's workshop to the point of
Hiank S*. ].
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Telegram Sext ox Emile Berlixer 's Arrival ix the Uxited
States ix 1S70. Ixset, Mr. Berlixer ix 1S72
Store in Washington Where Mr. Berliner Clerked
A ROLLING STONE 39
learning to analyze raw sugar. The knowledge
whetted his interest in research.
Many of his evenings Berliner now spent at
Cooper Institute, that meritorious university of the
New York poor for the past three generations. He
was a regular habitue of its library and indulged his
growing fondness for scientific books and publica-
tions. It was while frequenting Cooper Institute that
Berliner struck up an acquaintance with a man who,
as the result of a trifling episode, was destined to
play an important part in the shaping of Berliner's
career. Around the corner from his boarding-house
was a drugstore into which Berliner often dropped
for a chat with the proprietor, August Engel. The
druggist took a fancy to his visitor and a whimsical
interest in the young fellow's ambitions to develop
his scientific bent. One evening, as the pair was
standing around the coal-stove which, from the cen-
ter of the store, radiated heat throughout the prem-
ises, they drifted into a casual discussion of the laws
of physics. Berliner had a smattering of the subject
from his readings at Cooper Institute.
''I've got a book on physics that I'll give you,"
the druggist said. It was forthwith produced and
eagerly accepted. Berliner still has it. It is a Ger-
man book, published in 1854 and entitled Synopsis
of Physics and Meteorology. The author was Doctor
Johann Mueller, professor at the University of
Freiburg-in-Breisgau. The book was replete with
wood engravings and in its day was a classic work.
40 EMILE BERLINER
In Mueller's work were two chapters which en-
listed Eniile Berliner's particular interest. They
dealt, respectively, vrith. acoustics and electricity.
Electricity was then a very limited branch of sci-
ence, but Mueller treated it ^vith great clarity and
intelligence. The book contains an illustrated story
showing how Luigi Galvani, the eighteenth-century
professor of anatomy at Bologna, discovered fluid
electricity through a frog's leg which he had hung
on a copper wire to dry. As everj'body knows, gal-
vanometers, galvanoplastics and all the other
terminology connected with the "galvanic" branch
of physics get their names from the Italian scientist.
Synopsis of Physics and Meteorology forthwith be-
came Emile Berliner's faithful guide, philosophic
text-book and scientific friend. He had his nose in
it day and night. It set him to dreaming and think-
ing. He studied it till he knew his favorite chapters
almost by heart.
Berliner now had quit his bottle-washing job at
Fahlberg's laboratory and climbed several rungs up
the economic ladder by becoming a bookkeeper in a
feed store at twelve dollars a week.
One evening after work, while boarding a street-
car on his waj' home to supper, Berliner encoun-
tered a friendly face. It was that of B. J. Behrend,
now proprietor of the dry-goods store in Washing-
ton, where Berliner had his first job three years
before. Forthwith ensued an orgy of reminiscence
over the old davs. There was a new and different
A EOLLING STONE 41
Washington, Berliner was told, and a city much
richer in opportunity than the crude capital of Re-
construction days — so ran the seductive tale of the
long-lost friend, who gave persuasive assurance of
a future on the Potomac for a fellow as worldly
vase as Emile Berliner had become.
Berliner listened to the siren song, and arranged
to return to Washing-ton (it was the end of 1876) to
resume his clerking job in the Seventh Street store.
Before he left New York he took out his first nat-
uralization papers. Come what may, he was de-
termined to work out his salvation as an American
citizen. America was on the brink of an era of
stupendous invention. In its development the youth
of Hanover was ordained to play a role he w^ot
not of.
CHAPTER V
THE SPIEIT OP 1876
THE year 1876 marked far more than the one
hundredth anniversary of the birth of the na-
tion. It ushered in a new industrial age. We re-
member 1876 as the period of the great Centennial
at Philadelphia — as the patriotic celebration of a
century of American independence under the sover-
eign Stars and Stripes. But the year more richly
deserves to be indexed in national history as the
advent of a renaissance. It launched American in-
ventive ingenuity upon a cycle of achievement that
was to reconstruct the activities of the human race
and turn them into channels beyond all imaginings.
It can not be said that invention in America was
a lost art during the first hundred years of our lib-
eration from the British yoke. The inventive spirit
of the * 'founding fathers" and of their generations
of hardy offspring was far from being either extinct
or in decay. Franklin's lightning rod, Fulton's
steamboat, "Whitney's cotton gin, Morse's electric
telegraph, Goodyear 's vulcanized rubber, Howe's
sewing machine, Ericsson 's Monitor, Westinghouse 's
air brake, and Sholes' typewriter were all discov-
42
THE SPIRIT OF 1876 43
ered or devised prior to 1876. But brilliant in con-
ception and important in results as were those
master strokes of American genius, the age which
the Centennial introduced was to be distinguished
by discoveries of even more transcendent impor-
tance.
In their effects upon the lives and times of men,
the ideas about to spring from American brains
were ordained to be revolutionary. The nation and
the world were at the threshold of the telephone, the
talking machine, the incandescent lamp, the arc
light, the gasoline motor, the trolley car, the self-
binder, the skyscraper, the automobile, the motion
picture, high speed steel and the airplane. Spoiled
moderns, who look upon all these boons to ex-
istence as matters of course, can not easily compre-
hend the state of relative primitiveness which
prevailed in the United States at the time of the
Centennial. Radio, that quintessential accompani-
ment of present-day life, was not remotely dreamed
of when the Liberty Bell broadcast a new century of
American freedom on the Fourth of July, 1876. The
Centennial was the birthday of an epoch.
Men, women and children seemed to scent the
dawn of the new era. There was stimulus in the
very atmosphere America breathed. Inspired by its
colossal achievements thus far in wringing an em-
pire from out of the primeval soil, the young giant
of the western world stretched its sturdy muscles
and expanded its mighty chest in proud conscious-
44 EMILE BERLINER
ness of latent strength. It resolved upon fresh
conquests in the fields of material progress and upon
consistent development along the paths of enlight-
ened democracy. Such was the spirit of 1876.
No one was more fervently inoculated with it than
Emile Berliner. He, like nearly every young man
of ambition in the United States, had had a look at
the Centennial, though only a cursory one, for it was
confined to a day's holiday trip from New York.
Music filled his soul at the time more than electro-
magnetics. He did not know, when he visited Phila-
delphia, that Alexander Graham Bell's telephone —
such as it was — ^was modestly on exhibit at the
Centennial. When asked not long ago for the out-
standing impression of his visit to the great inter-
national exposition in Fairmount Park, Berliner
said: *'My recollection of seeing Offenbach conduct
the Centennial orchestra!" Yet the Centennial
spirit was destined to leave an indelible impress
upon Berliner's life. Another Emil — Rathenau,
founder of the famous Allgemeine Electricitats Ge-
sellschaft (General Electric Company) of Berlin —
came away from Philadelphia, declaring that the
Centennial ''had electrified his soul." Eventually
Rathenau electrified the Fatherland in a literal
sense by superintending the first telephone ex-
change in Germany and organizing the greatest
electrical manufacturing concern in Europe.
The spirit of 1876 was graphically depicted by
Emile Berliner twelve years after the Centennial
THE SPIRIT OF 1876 45
when, speaking mthin a stone's throw of Inde-
pendence Hall, he addressed the Franklin Institute
of Philadelphia. On May 16, 1888, at the first public
'demonstration of the gramophone, he referred in
these terms to the Centennial cycle :
**The last year in the first century of the history
of the United States was a remarkable one in the
history of science.
' ' There appeared about that period something in
the drift of scientific discussions which, even to the
mind of an observant amateur, foretold the coming
of important events.
**The dispute of Religion versus Science was
once more at its height; prominent daily papers
commenced to publish weekly discussions on scien-
tific topics; series of scientific books, in attractive
popular f oiTn, were eagerly bought by the cultured
classes; popular lectures on scientific subjects were
sure of commanding enthusiastic audiences; the
great works on evolution had just begun to take root
outside of the small circle of logical minds from
which they had emanated and which had fostered
them; scientific periodicals were expectantly
scanned for new information ; and the minds of both
professionals and amateurs were on the qui vive.
''Add to this the general excitement prevailing
on account of the forthcoming Centennial celebra-
tion with its cro^vning event, so dear to this nation
of inventors, the w^orld's exhibition, and even those
who did not at the time experience the effects of an
atmosphere pregnant with scientific ozone can, in
their minds, conjure up the pulsating, swaying and
turbulent sea of scientific research of that period.
Science e\ddently was in labor.
**The year 1876 came, and w^hen the jubilee was
at its very height, and when this great city of Phila-
delphia was one surging mass of patriots filling the
46 EMILE BERLINER
air with the sounds of millions of shouts, a still
small voice, hardly audible, and coming from a little
disk of iron fastened to the center of a membrane,
"whispered into the ear of one of the judges at the
exhibition, "who was one of the greatest of living
scientists, the tidings that a new revelation had de-
scended upon mankind — that the svrift and fiery
messenger of Heaven's clouds had been harnessed
to that delicate, tremorous,* and yet so potent form
of energy called the Human Voice.
"The speaking telephone was born."
It is the golden jubilee of the telephone that
America and mankind generally are commemorating
in this year of 1926. Telephony's progress in the
fifty years since its invention fairly staggers the
imagination. Figures frequently fatigue. But there
are romance and drama in those that tell the story
of the telephone, and a power to awe, even in our
age of monumental things.
On January 1, 1925, there were 26,038,508 tele-
phones in the world. Of that number, sixty-two
per cent., or roundly three-fifths, were in the United
States, which is overwhelmingly the banner
telephone country. Europe had twenty-six per
cent.; all other countries put together, twelve per
cent. The Scandinavian kingdoms are, telephon-
ically, next to America, the most progressive in the
world, and their inventors have made valuable con-
tributions to the art.
*Berlmer used the ■word tremorous subconsciously because it con-
veyed his precise meaning. Later it came to the attention of the
Century Dictionary, and was incorporated in all subsequent editioHa
of that lexicon, with credit to Berliner.
THE SPIRIT OF 1876 47
During the year 1924 the loquacious planet which
civilized man inhabits and surcharges with language
echoed to the thunder of 30,543,134,000 recorded
and tabulated telephone conversations. Having the
lion's share of telephones, Americans largely mo-
nopolized the world's thirty billion talks by wire.
There is an average of over one telephone conver-
sation daily for every three persons, men, women or
children, in the United States. While we were hold-
ing twenty-one billion odd conversations, the rest of
the world was conducting a beggarly nine billion
odd. Following ourselves, the Germans and the
Japanese were telephonically the most verbose peo-
ples. China, or at least that portion of China still
domiciled in Asia, does not figure in the official tele-
phone statistics. The largest and most complete
Chinese telephone exchange is in San Francisco. It
is an artistic and architecturally exquisite little
building, reminiscent of Cathay in its everj^ nook
and corner, and conducted by American-born
Chinese girl operators who dress bewitchingly in
native garb and lilt "hello" in the ancient accents
of their ancestors. Nearly twenty thousand sub-
scribers are served from their pagoda of palaver.
San Francisco leads American cities in the number
of telephones per each one hundred population.
Perhaps Chinese capacity for conversation is re-
sponsible for giving the Golden Gate that distinc-
tion.
Nearly three-quarters of the world's telephone
48 EMILE BERLINER
systems are privately owned. About a quarter are
comprised under government systems, such as Great
Britain, France and Germany maintain. In the
United States the overwhelming bulk of telephones
is that embraced within the great coast-to-coast Bell
System, in the eventual perfection of which the work
of Emile Berliner played so essential a part. The
Bell System has more contacts with the people of
the country than any other single institution, not
even excepting the United States Post-Office. Since
it ** hooked up" radio broadcasting stations with
its continent-Avide telephone and telegTaph lines,
its contacts can be calculated only in tens of millions.
Bell lines connect with Canada and Cuba. In the
two cities of New York and Chicago alone there are
more telephones than in the four continents of Eu-
rope, Asia, Africa and South America combined.
The 45,000,000 miles of wire in the Bell System
would span the distance from the earth to the moon
more than one hundred and forty times. So univer-
sal is the telephone that it has practically put the
old "city directory" out of business. Anybody in
hamlet, town or city worth looking up nowadays has
his name in a telephone directory.
The financial aspect of American telephonic de-
velopment is even more dazzling than the figures
which record its physical expansion. So vast have
become the holdings of the Bell System that a cor-
poration entirely separate from the telephone com-
pany proper, the Bell Telephone Securities
THE SPIRIT OF 1876 49
Company, is now concerned with their administra-
tion. At its head is David F. Houston, who became
the chancellor of the telephone exchequer after hav-
ing been Secretary of the Treasury in President
Wilson's Cabinet.
Mr. Houston directs the economics of a colossal
organism. The number of stockholders in the Bell
System (known on the New York stock exchange
as the American Telephone and Telegraph Com-
pany) has grown from seven thousand five hundred
in 1900 to more than three hundred and sixty-two
thousand in 1926. About a sixth of the stockholders
are Bell System employees. The total assets of the
System on December 31, 1925 were $2,938,000,000.
Telephone employees in the United States, including
those engaged in making Bell apparatus, numbered
on January 1, 1926, more than 335,189 (of whom
41,709 were on the payroll of the Western Electric
Company). During 1925 more than 813,000
individual telephone installations were added to the
Bell System. By the end of the year 16,720,000
telephones were inter-connected so that practically
any one of them can be connected with any other
one anywhere in the United States, day or night.
Over 50,000,000 toll and exchange connections, each
an individual transaction, are handled daily.
At the end of 1925 the Bell System's capital
stock outstanding amounted to $921,597,000.* Net in-
*The capital stock of the "A. T. and T. " -was increased during
the summer of 1926 to more than one billion dollars, making it prob-
ably the biggest corporation in the world, a distinction previously
held by the United States Steel Corporation,
50 EMILE BERLINEB
come during that year was $107,504,000, derived
from gross earnings of $761,200,000. For more
than forty-four years the American Telephone and
Telegraph Company and its predecessor have paid
dividends to the public, which owns its stock, of not
less than seven and one-half dollars a share per
annum. Since July, 1921, dividends have been at
the rate of nine dollars a share. Telephone rates
are, on the average, only thirty-three per cent,
higher than ten years ago, while wages and material
costs have increased at a considerably larger rate.
The genesis of these fabulous results, the mate-
rial measure of the triumph of telephony's cre-
ators— whose were the hands and minds that en-
abled their fruition — the vision and the plodding
that, between them, evolved conversational order
out of acoustic chaos — the bitter controversies and
heart-breaking, bankrupting litigation that dogged
the footsteps of the pioneers — how despair, then
victory, accompanied their labors in kaleidoscopic
procession — that is now the story to be unfolded.
Man's eternal struggle with the inscrutable is
marked by few episodes so filled with drama.
CHAPTER VI
CONCEPTION- OF THE TELEPHONE
ALL inventions savor of the romantic, running
the gamut that begins \vith inspiration,
is marked by despair half-way, and ends in triumph.
But there is no scientific miracle that outrivals the
romance of the telephone.
Talking by telephone is nowadays so fundamen-
tal a part of human existence that w^e take it for
granted, like the air we breathe, or the sky above
us, or the flowers that bloom in the spring. We have
come to regard the telephone, in other words, as a
natural phenomenon that was always with God's
children. Yet it celebrated its fiftieth birthday
only in 1926. It is but a third of the age of our
young republic.
In the invention of the telephone one name
stands out like Mars at Perihelion — ^Alexander
Graham Bell. Though the idea of a telephone was
not original with Bell, no one anticipated him in
actual achievement. His own discovery was utterly
unique ; his application of it, scientifically complete.
It only remained for another to find the missing link
in an otherwise flawless acoustic chain. That link
51
52 EMILE BERLINER
was a practical transmitter. Alexander Graham
Bell was the inventor of the telephone. Emile Ber-
liner was its perfecter.
The modern telephone is the joint product of
their genius. History will bracket their names as
those of men who dreamed their dreams in so prov-
idential proximity that mankind, with little delay,
was able to avail itself of the boon of telephony.
Emile Berliner's invention of the transmitter, to
be dealt with in orderly sequence in succeeding
chapters, has been called the jewel in the crown that
Bell fashioned — the gem that gave it effective luster.
Charles Bourseuil, a Frenchman, was the first
scientist of record to concern himself with the idea
of sending speech by telegraph. In 1854, with un-
usual boldness, Bourseuil advanced the theory that
two diaphragms, one operating an electric contact
and the other under the influence of an electro-
magnet, might be employed for transmitting speech
over long distances connected by wire. ^' Speak
against one diaphragm," Bourseuil said, ''and let
each vibration 'make or break' the electric contact.
The electric pulsations thereby produced will set
the other diaphragm working, and the latter ought
then to reproduce the transmitted sound."
The Frenchman was credulous enough — his
hypothesis must almost have subjected him to sus-
picions of lunacy — to believe that electricity could
in some way be made to propel the human voice
through space. Bourseuil's conception was intrin-
CONCEPTION OF THE TELEPHONE 53
sically sound. He realized tliat if some electrical
mechanism could be devised so flexible as to respond
to all of the vibrations of sound, he would have a
*' telephone."
BourseuiPs ideas were exploited with avidity by
European scientific journals, which reprinted them
from the original French publications. Among the
first to take note of them was a prominent German
semi-weekly, The Didaskalia, published at Frank-
fort-on-the-Main. On September 28, 1854, it gave the
earliest knoAvn expression to the term, ''Electrical
Telephony." Under that title The Didaskalia
printed a full account of BourseuiPs fascinating
thesis. Had his proposition not called for a "make
and break" electric contact, the telephone might
have been a reality long before Bell invented it. As
things turned out, the Frenchman's theory led the
early explorers in the new field astray. Bourseuil
died without carrying out his ingenious idea.
Among Frankfort's institutes of learning was a
Physical Society, which counted among its most
zealous members an enthusiastic young teacher
named Philip Reis, son of a poor baker. Reis con-
structed for himself a ''telephone" embodying
BourseuiPs conception. But it proved incapable of
transmitting anything except the pitch of tones, or
the pitch of speech. It could not transmit their
quality. It produced nothing but a musical buzz.
It never talked. Years afterward, Bell showed why.
The reason was that you can not talk with inter-*
54 EMILE BERLINER
rupted currents. You can talk only by continuous,
electric current^ which represents the undulations
of waves of the voice in all their minute shadings.
Emile Berliner never tires of recalling that when
Germans, twenty-five years later, read newspaper
accounts of Bell's invention of the telephone, they
flouted it as "an American exaggeration." They
asserted that Germany knew all about the Bour-
seuil-Reis apparatus and was certain there never
could be any such animal as a talking telephone.
The German language, which is rich in expres-
sive idioms not easily translatable into English or
other tongues, boasts of the term RecJithaberei — the
state of being always and unquestionably right.
Germans wallowed in RecJithaberei when they heard
about Bell's telephone and Berliner's transmitter.
They said it simply ''couldn't be done." Yet when
they were finally convinced that it ivas being done,
the Germans blithely claimed that the telephone was
invented in Germany first! When Philip Reis, the
baker's son was laid away, his epitaph read: "Der
Er finder des Telephons^^ — inventor of the tele-
phone. Reis was reported to have died in conse-
quence of the sudden loss of the power of speech —
a dramatic end for a man who was undoubtedly on
the high road to achievement in the field of tele-
phony.
Invention of the telegraph and the laying of the
Atlantic cable gave natural and irresistible impetus
in America to the next stage in sound transmis-
CONCEPTION OF THE TELEPHONE 55
sion — telephony. In an insignificant shop in cul-
tured Boston a tall, raw-boned Scotsman, not yet
thirty, was grappling more or less blindly with a
device he termed a harmonic telegraph. ^'He was
wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript
machine, a sort of crude haraionica with a clock-
spring reed, a magnet, and a wire, ' ' says Herbert N.
Casson, in his History of the Telephone, published
in 1922. *'It was a most absurd toy in appearance.
It was unlike any other thing that had ever been
made in any country."
The plodding Scotsman was a young professor
of the laws of speech. His name was Alexander
Graham Bell. Born at Edinburgh in 1847, he pur-
sued the calling of three generations of his fore-
bears. The first Alexander Graham Bell won
distinction as the creator of a method for overcom-
ing stammering and other defects of the vocal
organs. His descendant, Alexander Melville Bell,
became an elocutionist of renown and invented a
remarkable sign language which he named "Visible
Speech." It was to be the destiny of the third
Bell — Alexander Graham — to give supreme expres-
sion to the ancestral talent for improvement of
speech by inventing the telephone. "Graham,"
Casson sets forth in his gripping story of tile tele-
phone, "inlierited the peculiar genius of his fathers,
both inventive and rhetorical, to such a degree that
as a boy he had constructed an artificial skull, from
gutta-percha and India rubber, which, when enliv-
56 EMILE BERLINER
ened by a blast of air from a hand-bellows, would
actually pronounce several words in an almost hu-
man manner!"
The Bell family emigrated to Canada in quest
of a climate more invigorating than that of Scot-
land, where two of Alexander Graham's brothers
had succumbed to the white plague. He himself was
threatened with the dread malady, and undoubtedly
owed his escape to his early life on the North
American plains. There, near Brantford, Ontario,
he recuperated while teaching ''visible speech" to
Mohawk Indians. In 1875 Bell was making his liv-
ing in Boston as a teacher of ''visible speech" to
deaf mutes. But, as a thorough student of the cor-
rect theory of the telephone, his absorbing ambi-
tion was to convert it into a workable, practical
utility. That was the ultimate goal of his toyings
with the harmonic telegraph idea in the machine-
shop off Scollay Square. "If," Bell once explained
in the early stages of his experiments, "I could
make a current of electricity vary in intensitj^, pre-
cisely as the air varies in density'' during the produc-
tion of a sound, I should be able to transmit speech
telegraphically." Along that line he steadfastly
carried on. Meantime he provided satisfactorily for
the creature comforts by maintaining a "School of
Vocal Physiology." But as enthusiasm to plumb
the bottomless mystery of telephony waxed, the
number of his pupils dwindled. At length, two deaf
mute girls, Mabel Hubbard (whom Bell afterward
CONCEPTION OF THE TELEPHONE 57
married) and Georgie Sanders, with whose uncle
and aunt the young professor now lived, became the
principal source of his pedagogical income.
The Sanders home was in Salem, scene of
early American * Svitchcraf t. " The cellar of the
house was Bell's laboratory and workshop for three
industrious years. There, amid batteries, magnets,
tuning forks, wire, trumpets and what-not, he tink-
ered and adventured in hermit-like seclusion. The
canny Scot in him feared possible discovery and
theft of his ideas.
Bell, having determined that *4f I can make a
deaf mute talk, I can make iron talk," resorted to
the most outlandish recourses to promote his ex-
periments. He cajoled a medical friend to ampu-
tate an ear from a corpse, together with its internal
parts, in order that Bell might use the human aural
mechanism in tests with his acoustical apparatus.
The conception and subsequent invention of the
speaking telephone, while the latter was based on
an accidental discovery, was the logical result of
Bell's preparatory studies in acoustics and of liis
innate capacity instantly to recognize the supreme
importance of what suddenly happened — an *' ex-
ceedingly faint sound which to other men might
have been as inaudible as silence itself," says Cas-
son, ''but to Bell was a thunderclap."
CHAPTER VII
BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE
BELL'S activities in 1875 were carried on in the
attic of a fivo-story building at No. 109 Court
Street, Boston. There was situated the electrical
workshop of Charles "Williams, manufacturer of
telegraphic instruments. It was the Mecca of aspir-
ing inventors, men of vast dreams and meager
funds, who came to Williams to have the offspring
of their visions incubated into brass and iron. One
of these dreamers was Alexander Graham Bell. A
mechanic in Williams ' shop was another young man
of Scotch ancestry, Thomas A. Watson, who was
assigned to fashion Bell's apparatus. Later Wat-
son became Bell's assistant. Thenceforward they
worked together in the Court Street attic till the
hour of triumph.
Bell had just reached the age of twenty-nine
when on March 7, 1876, the United States Patent
Office issued his patent, No. 174,465 — since described
as "the most valuable single patent ever issued^ ^ in
the world. It was so uniquely ingenious an inven-
tion that it couldn't be called by any recognizable
58
BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE 59
name. Bell himself, groping wholly in the dark,
christened it '*an improvement in telegraphy."
But with the granting of his patent Bell's ex-
periments, with Watson's faithful assistance, con-
tinued intensively. Watson's own story of their
collaboration is told in his Birth and Babyhood of
the Telephone — an address delivered before the
third annual convention of the Telephone Pioneers
of America at Chicago in 1913 :
**0n the afternoon of June 2, 1875, we were hard
at work on the same old job, testing some modifica-
tion of the instruments. Things were badly out of
tune that aftenioon in that hot garret, not only the
instruments, but, I fancy, my enthusiasm and my
temper, though Bell was as energetic as ever.
*'I had charge of the transmitters as usual, set-
ting them squealing one after the other, while Bell
was retuning the receiver springs one by one, press-
ing them against his ear as I have described. One
of the transmitter springs I was attending to
stopped vibrating and I plucked it to start it again.
It didn't start and I kept on plucking it, when sud-
denly I heard a shout from Bell in the next room,
and then out he came with a rush, demanding, 'What
did you do then? Don't change anything. Let me
see!'
''I showed him. It was very simple. The make-
and-break points of the transmitter spring I was
trying to start had become welded together, so that
when I snapped the spring the circuit had remained
unbroken while that strip of magnetized steel by its
vibration over the pole of its magnet, was generat-
ing that marvelous conception of Bell's — a current
of electricity that varied in intensity precisely as
the air was varying in density within hearing dis-
tance of that spring.
60 EMILE BERLINER
"That wave-like undulatory current had passed
through the connecting wire to the distant receiver
which, fortunately, was a mechanism that could
transform that cuiTent back into an extremely faint
echo of the sound of the vibrating spring that had
generated it, but what was still more fortunate, the
right man had that mechanism at his ear during
that fleeting moment, and instantly recognized the
transcendent importance of that faint sound thus
electrically transmitted.
"The shout I heard and his excited rush into my
room were the result of that recognition. The
speakmg telephotie was horn at that moment.
"Bell knew perfectly well that the mechanism
that could transmit all the complex vibrations of
one sound could do the same for any sound, even
that of speech. That experiment showed him that
the complex apparatus he had thought would be
needed to accomplish that long dreamed result was
not at all necessary, for here was an extremely
simple mechanism operating in a perfectly obvious
way, that could do it perfectly.
"All the experimenting that followed that dis-
cover^,'', up to the time the telephone was put into
practical use, was largely a matter of working out
the details. We spent a few hours verifying the dis-
covery, repeating it with all the differently tuned
springs we had, and before we parted that night
Boll gave me directions for making the first electric
speaking telephone. ' '
How real telephone history later was inaugu-
rated is recorded by Watson in a few simple words
that deserve immortality:
"I had gone to the Exeter Place rooms one eve-
ning to help Bell test some improvement and to
spend the night mth him. The occasion had not
been arranged or rehearsed, as I suspect the send-
BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE 61
ing of the first message over the Morse telegraph
was arranged years before. Instead of that noble
first telegraphic message — 'What hath God
wrought' — the first message of the telephone 'was:
'3/r. Watson, please come here, I ivant yoii!' "
That was on March 10, 1876. It was the first
complete sentence ever spoken and understood over
the telephone. Although perfection was still invis-
ibly remote, Bell and "Watson had seen a great light.
During the summer of 1876 matters moved more
rapidly with them. How grateful Bell was for small
favors in the form of gradual progress is quaintly
admitted by Watson, who observed that ''the tele-
phone was talking so well that one didnH have to
ask the other man to say it over again more than
three or four times before one could understand
quite well, if the sentences ivere simple.^'
It was the summer of the great Centennial at
Philadelphia. Through the influence of Gardiner
G. Hubbard, the father of Mabel Hubbard, the deaf
mute to whom Bell had taught "visible speech" and
who was now his sweetheart, the young inventor
gained fortuitous access to the exposition. Hub-
bard, a Centennial Commissioner from Massachu-
setts, arranged for Bell to exhibit his telephone in
some obscure waste space in the Education Depart-
ment. There, on a plain table standing between a
stairway and a wall, the mechanism that was to
revolutionize mankind's activities first peeped forth.
No \iolet was ever more shrinking.
62 EMILE BERLINER
Romance took Bell to the Centennial, and Chance
brought about his recognition there. By the merest
accident of good fortune, the exposition judges had
planned a special trip of inspection through the
Department of Education for the first Sunday Bell
was in Philadelphia. Hearing of the tour, Gardiner
G. Hubbard, a patriarch of a man with flowing
white hair and a beard that draped almost his whole
chest, successfully pleaded with the judges to tarry
for a moment at the hole in the wall where Bell's
telephone apparatus was on display. It had been
there, unheralded and unnoticed, for the better part
of six weeks.
Amid the myriad of novelties with which the
great Centennial was crowded, neither officials nor
visitors had dignified the telephone with anything
except passing attention ; and hardly that. Nobody
at all had the faintest realization that this crude
contraption had already given forth a tinkle
destined one day to roar around the ci\'ilized globe.
A hot Philadelphia afternoon had gone and sun-
down come, when, along about seven o'clock, the
judges, who must have been conscientious souls,
finally put in an appearance, frazzled by the heat,
fatigued by their miles of meanderings through the
exhibition buildings, and on the verge of surrender
to the inner man, for it was past dinner-time. Bell
pondered that they were in anything but ideal mood
to pass considered judgment upon his poor thing of
brass and wood and reeds. His fears were not
BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE 63
groundless. With a gesture of indifference border-
ing on contempt, one of the judges picked up one
of Bell's receivers and replaced it on the table with
a bored grimace. Another judge indulged in what
we moderns call a ''wise crack," bringing comic
relief into the situation, with the abashed young
inventor as the butt.
Then it was Chance intervened, clad in imperial
robes. The Centennial's most august ^dsitors were
the Emperor Dom Pedro de Alcantara, of Brazil,
and his consort, the Empress Theresa, doomed,
thirteen years later, to be dethroned by a revolution
and to spend the rest of their saddened lives in
banishment and exile. Casson terms what now en-
sued a fit setting for a chapter in The Arabian
Nights Entertainments. Their Brazilian majesties,
at the head of a retinue of courtiers and Centennial
oflficials, happened at that late hour to be making
one of their periodical promenades through the ex-
position grounds and buildings. They sauntered
quite casually into the room where Bell's telephone
was on exhibition. To the consternation of the in-
ventor, his friends and the jury of mocking judges,
Dom Pedro strode straight toward Bell, held out
both hands to him, and said: "Professor Bell, I am
delighted to see you again!"
Had the roof of the building suddenly caved in,
or the floor sunk beneath them, neither Bell nor the
judges could have been more thunderstruck. It
must be remembered that, till that moment, Alex-
64 EMILE BEBLINER
ander Graham Bell was an utterly unknown inven-
tor, like thousands who were tempting Fate and
wooing the goddess of Fortune at the Centennial.
In its voluminous catalogue they were merely
numbers, and Exhibits A, B. C, etc. Bell was
momentarily at a loss to account for the Brazil-
ian Emperor's unfeigned cordiality and unmistak-
able acquaintance with him. Then it suddenly
dawned upon him that Dom Pedro a couple of years
before had observed Bell teaching a class of mutes
at Boston University, and, largely in admiration
of the ^'Bell system" of visible speech, later estab-
lished an institute for the deaf at Rio de Janeiro.
Royalty now altered the whole atmosphere of the
stuffy quarters in which the Bell telephone was
tucked away. The judges were no longer jocular
or apathetic. They were standing up and taking
notice. Dom Pedro was fascinated by Bell's simple
story of what he had invented. The Emperor,
though he was from Brazil, and not Missouri, asked
to be shown. Bell had a wire running across the
room. At the transmitter end he himself took up
station, having requested Dom Pedro to place the
receiver to his ear on the other side of the room. An
awesome silence reigned while the entire party, a
group of fifty or more, waited, a little incredulously,
for something to happen. Then suddenly, and ex-
citedly, with a typical Latin gesture of animated
emotion and astonishment, the Brazilian Emperor
cried aloud: ''My God! It talks!"
BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE 65
Bell next invited Professor Joseph Henry, the
oldest scientist present, to take the receiver. Henry
was the acknowledged authority on electrical science
in the United States. He evolved the theory of a
telephone before Bell's birth in the Scottish high-
lands half a century before. In 1875 Bell borrowed
money to journey from Salem to "Washington for a
consultation with Henry, whom he found generously
helpful and encouraging. Henry told Bell that the
young inventor, his junior by fifty years, was *'in
possession of the germ of a great invention."
Bell lamented his lack of electrical knowledge.
"Get it," said Henry. Bell said afterward those
two words proved a life-time of inspiration to him.
After Professor Henry, Britain's great savant,
then Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, and
recognized throughout the world as the most em-
inent living electrical authority, was invited to
undergo the sensational experience of telephone
talk. Thomson a few years before had functioned
triumphantly as engineer of the first Atlantic cable.
When he turned from Bell's receiver, he affirmed,
enthusiastically: "It does speak. It is the most
wonderful thing I have seen in America!"
Bell and his telephone had now "arrived."
Henry and Thomson were both judges. That they
would heartily confer upon the invention the cov-
eted Certificate of Award was no longer a matter
of doubt. In their subsequent official reports they
frankly registered their early skepticism and as un-
66 EMILE BERLINER
reservedly conceded their complete conversion.
*'Mr. Bell has achieved a result of transcendent
scientific interest," wrote Sir William Thomson.
*'I heard his instrument speak distinctly several
sentences. ... I was astonished and de-
lighted. ... It is the greatest marvel hitherto
achieved by the electric telegraph."
Darkness had long superseded dusk that humid
Philadelphia Sunday afternoon at the Centennial
before the judges were tempted to desert Bell's
telephone. Alternately they talked and listened —
literally, for hours. Next day the telephone was
transported in triumph from its humble place in
Education Hall to the judges' pavilion. There it
remained enthroned for the rest of the Centennial,
the magnet that drew scientists and visitors in jost-
ling throngs. Overnight it had become ''the star
of the Centennial."
"It had been given no more than eighteen words
in the official catalogue," says Casson, "and here
it was acclaimed as the wonder of wonders. It lia
been conceived in a cellar and born in a machine
shop ; and now, of all the gifts that our young Amer-
ican Republic had received on its one hundredth
birthday, the telephone was honored as the rarest
and most welcome of them all,"
CHAPTER VIII
BERLINER SETS TO WORK
BY THE time the Centennial had passed into his-
tory, leaving America in a state of national ex-
altation over her glorious past and illimitable future,
Emile Berliner was at work again in Washington.
His job was that of a bookkeeper in the Seventh
Street store, but it was not his pre-occupation.
''Long, long thoughts" filled his head, and they
were far remote from debits and credits. He had
passed his twenty-fifth birthday. He had taken
out American citizenship first papers. He had
become thoroughly infected with the creative
spirit that saturated the country. His studies in
acoustics and electricity turned his attention
naturally to the subject of telephony. The new
science was a matter of popular discussion because
of newspaper accounts, but few had ever seen a
telephone, let alone speak through one. Even Ber-
^liner himself had never had a look at a telephone
instrument.
\ Unmistakably, as the impending development of
Emile Berliner's bent was to show, the young man
was an inventor by nature or intuition. It was to
67
68 EMILE BERLINER
demonstrate that a man may even possess a scien-
tific instinct without knowing it. Berliner had an
unquenchable longing to do something in the scien-
tific field into which ambition was leading him, but
he had no glimmer of realization that in him lay
dormant talent which would ultimately spur ambi-
tion to the point of stellar achievement. Thus
without anything savoring of trained equipment,
premeditation ot conscious purpose, Berliner's
mind now drifted steadily along the uncharted
course to which the wizardry of telephony pointed.
It would not do to say that Berliner was merely
toying with the problems which electrical sound-
transmission raised in his inquisitive thoughts, for
he was deeply impressed by its mysteries and pro-
found possibilities. But in the post-Centennial
winter that found liim drudging in a bookkeeper's
cage at the back of a little store in Washington,
Berliner's scientific activities were mainly confined
to dreaming and speculating. He had a vagnie no-
tion that somewhere along electrical lines a career
would eventually open for him. It is no disparage-
ment of the reputations which many inventors have
won to say that predilection and accident are often
among the factors upon which they were built.
Could the annals of scientific achievement be traced
to their source, it would undoubtedly be discovered
that more than one dizzy height was scaled by means
of chance abetting genius at a psychological moment.
Lady Luck has played a star role throughout the
BERLINER SETS TO WORK 69
whole drama of mankind's miceasing evolution. But
it is only the intense mind, prepared to recognize the
accidental when it happens, that turns it to account.
Such was the mentality of Emile Berliner.
James J. Storrow, Sr., of Boston, one of the
most brilliant patent lawyers America ever pro-
duced, then counsel for the Bell Telephone interests,
once made a study of the psychological conditions
out of which inventors and inventions are developed.
He found that far more original ideas occur to in-
ventors between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-
eight years than at any other period. Berliner, in
the midst of his twenty-sixth year, was immersed in
the consuming aspiration to make something of
himself in physical science in general, and in the
magic field of the speaking telephone in particular.
To become identified with this new industry as a
worker in it, rather than to give it new direction
in any pioneering sense, was his primary desire.
It amounted to a determination. He sensed that
telephony was "the coming thing." He wanted to
be on the ground floor of its development, and grow
up with it.
In 1910 Emile Berliner, addressing the Tele-
phone Society of Washington, gave an amusing ac-
count of the conditions amid which he set to ex-
perimental telephonic work in the bleak midwinter
of 1876-1877.
"I lived in Washington, as I do now," he said,
**and there was one little store that dealt in electri-
70 EMILE BERLINER
cal goods, the store of Mr. George C. Maynard. It
was on G Street, between Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Streets — a little bit of a store. It contained a few
keys and sounders and bluestone batteries (they did
not have any others, to speak of) and some relays
and some tapes, and some wire, and probably one
or two more highly scientific coils and galvano-
meters. But that was all. That comprised the
electrical stores of Washington.
"There was no commercial electric light, but
there was at the Capitol, near the dome upstairs, a
large room in which was a big battery consisting
of about one hundred so-called Smee cells. At that
time these were ver^^ well known among scientific
men. Each consisted of a jar full of sulphuric acid
and water, a piece of carbon and a piece of zinc.
That was a Smee cell. Of course, you know it
polarized, weakened, very quickly. Every Fourth of
July the daily papers announced : ' To-night the elec-
tric light will be shown from the Capitol, ' and every-
body was down on Pennsylvania Avenue after dark
to see it. All at once we would see a brilliant arc
light at the lower part of the dome. The electrician
was at work. By and by it went out because the
battery polarized, and then we had to wait about
twenty minutes or a half-hour for another glimpse
of the shining electric light. It was quite an inter-
esting exliibition, and everybody enjoyed it very
highly.
"There were no dry cells known in those days
and there was no electric bell. The house bells
were mechanical. Iron bell wire was used, and
eveiy blacksmith, or every locksmith, knew how to
fix the house bell, and from time to time the wire
would stretch, or something of the kind, and they
had all kinds of trouble with the bell. Of course, it
was a pretty good-sized bell, and gave the old-time
jingle such as you hear now and then in boarding-
houses.
First Bell Telephone, June, 1875
Bell's Magneto System, 1876
IIW If
Bell's Magneto Telephone, 1877. (Contempokary Jllustkation)
Bell's Magneto Telephone System in 1877
BERLINER SETS TO WORK 71
''Then there were horse-cars, no electric cars.
Afterward they had the cable-car, and one day, the
power-house was burned, and they had to supply
horses for the cars. I recall how I once had the
privilege of riding up to Mt. Pleasant in a mule
car. They got the mules over in Alexandria to help
out. Of course, it required some time to get around,
but people had plenty of time then. If you wanted
anything, you had to send a messenger, and you
could attend to only two or three transactions a day,
where you can now attend to a hundred "snth the
aid of the telephone.
"There was but one electrical paper in the
United States. That was the official organ of the
Western Union Telegraph Company, and known as
the Journal of the Telegraiih. It came out once a
month as a sort of pamphlet. Such were the con-
ditions in 1876."
Berliner was li\dng in a room on the third floor
of a typical, middle-class Washington brick dwelling
of the era, situated at No. 812 Sixth Street, N. W.,
and just around the comer from the Behrend store.
Though plainly furnished, the house was neatly
kept by a widow and her two half-grown children,
who were engaged in the time-honored business of
** taking lodgers." Berliner's quarters soon came
to look and smell like an electrical laboratory. He
filled the place with wires, batteries and other
paraphernalia. Presently he rigged up a set of
** telephones" between his window and the barn.
Another series of animated wires led to the living
quarters of his landlady and her family, who were
duly pressed into Berliner's experimental service.
72 EMILE BERLINER
The house at No. 812 Sixth Street still stands.
When Emile Berliner visited it not long ago, with
a party of friends interested in seeing-* his first
workshop, the present occupant was astonished to
learn that she inhabits so historic premises. But
she returned coincidence for surprise, when Ber-
liner told her of the establishment's epochal place
in telephony, for, she said, "I have three daughters
and two sons-in-law, they all work for the telephone
company, and my late husband himself was an in-
ventor ! His name was Frank Howarth Brown and
he devised the sorts caster for making type." The
widow thought her home might well aspire to be
known as *' Telephone House." It was not long
afterward that The Transmitter, house organ of the
Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company in
Washington, having had its attention called to the
quaint history of the lodging-house in Sixth Street,
devoted an illustrated article to it. As "Telephone
House" it now takes its place in historic Washing-
ton.
Berliner had not seen the Bell membrane tele-
phone at the Centennial and began tinkering with
speech-transmission much as you play blind man's
buff — without knowing at all where you're going.
He thought that the proper way to transmit speech
was by means of battery current. That fundamen-
tal seemed clear to him. Bell had made his inven-
tion with the magnetic current, but Berliner
thought it might be possible to do it differently, so
BERLINER SETS TO WORK 73
before the Bell process was understood except by
a limited number of scientists, Berliner set out
on unexplored paths of his own. Spare time during
the working day and all of his evening time, till
sleep claimed him, found him scheming and plod-
ding, wondering and thinking, with his interest in
the electrio mysteries growing with every unre-
quited experiment.
Presently it occurred to Berliner that he could
take a diaphragm and a contact-pin, or screw, touch-
ing it in the center, and somehow produce an un-
dulatory, wave-like electric current by continuous
action of the contact, that is to say, not by inter-
rupting it, but by some form of perpetuity. *'I did
not catch on to the pressure principle right away,"
he explains, '*but I thought that if I took a flat
spring and attached that to a screw, I could adjust
the spring against the diaphragm — the current, of
course, passing across the contact — so that if I
spoke against it, each vibration would bring a little
broader surface of the spring against the diaphragm
and thereby produce electric sound waves in the
current. ' '
That was Berliner's first crude idea. He gave
it form and substance by patching up a flimsy sort
of ' ' telephone, ' ' which consisted of a membrane and
a piece of spring in front. But he found he could
not transmit speech. No discernible action ensued.
Berliner now realized, probably for the first time,
that his technical knowledge was unequal to the de-
74 EMILE BERLINER
velopment of a conception that was inherently and
scientifically sound. Then Fate intervened. It
guided his steps in a fruitful direction.
Berliner had struck up an acquaintance with Mr.
Alvan S. Richards, chief operator at the Washington
fire-alarm telegraph office, which the former visited
occasionally. In those archaic times, forty-nine
years ago, fire-alarm systems were as primitive as
everything else in America was. The Washington
fire telegraph office was filled with the usual jumble
of instruments, alarm-bells and old-fashioned blue-
stone cells or batteries. During one of his visits,
Berliner told Richards that, in connection with his
amateur telephonic experiments, he was now inter-
ested in learning telegraphy, and had actually been
practising at ''sending."
' ' Come back and let me hear what you can do, ' '
said Richards.
The chief of the fire-alarm telegraph pointed
to an instrument in disuse, and told his visitor he
might try his hand at it. Berliner had but begmi,
when Richards interrupted to advise :
''Hold on, this isn't right. You must press down
the key — not simply touch it."
"What difference does that make — whether I
press the key down or not — so long as it makes a
contact?" asked Berliner curiously.
"What you have to do," explained Richards,
"is to make a firm contact, otherwise your message
might not be readable at the receiving end." Then
BERLINER SETS TO WORK 75
he explained that in long-distance transmission,
where the resistance is high, the sending key must
be pressed down rather forcibly if efficient reception
is to be assured.
''That's why Ave use men exclusively for long-
distance telegraphy," Richards added, ''because
they naturally press down hard. They have a
strong touch. Women wouldn't naturally press
down hard and are therefore not adaptable to long-
distance work."
That clear explanation immediately sank into
Berliner's mind. Quick as a flash, he rejoined:
"Do you mean to say that more current passes
over that contact when I press hard?"
"Decidedly. That's exactly w^hat I mean," was
the reply.
"All right. Thanks. Good-by." And Berliner
was off.
"I went home in a highly expectant mood," he
has since recounted, in telling of what proved to be
the turning point in Berliner's telephonic re-
searches. "I knew I had it. Forthwith I rigged up
a diaphragm, made a contact with a steel button, and
polished it up so brightly as to insure a clean contact.
Then I began to adjust it until the galvanometer
showed the current. Then I pressed ever so gently.
I found that each time I pressed against it the gal-
vanometer deflected a larger angle. I then knew the
principle was right."
Berhner saw through the microphonic principle
76 EMILE BERLINER
before he had worked it out with apparatus. The
kernel of his discovery lay in the conception of its
operation. All the rules of electricity theretofore
forbade the microphone. The invariable rule in
electro-magnets had been firm contacts. He had here
a loose contact with its importance lying in the vari-
ableness of the press,ure, which at once presented
itself as something far more delicate than the abrupt
make-and-break principle of the old and abandoned
Bourseuil-Reis apparatus. Berliner was using f
Bell's undulatory idea, only he converted an already
existing electric current of any strength into ivaves,
corresponding to sound waves with all their minute
characteristics, instead of letting the force of the
voice produce a weak electric current as Bell's tele-
phone did.
"It needs an abler pen than mine to do justice to
the work that Emile Berliner did in improving the
telephone," says Waldemar Kaempffert, engineer,
patent attorney and one-time editor of the Scientific
American and Popular Science Monthly. ** Berliner
was one of half-a-dozen men who saw the short-
comings of the early telephone transmitter. He
improved it both acoustically and electrically —
standardized it, in a word, so that it became
ultimately the instrument it is to-day. The Courts
of the United States have given Berliner the most
ample credit for this achievement, after a thorough
examination of what patent lawyers call 'the state
of the art.' '»
BERLINER SETS TO WORK 77
During the famous telephone litigation Mr. Stor-
row, the Bell Company's counsel, elucidating the
Berliner discovery, said: ^'A thousand inventors
have worked on telephones and five hundred of them
on microphones. They have improved the details,
but have not been able to supersede the Berliner
type, so brilliant and daring was Berliner's concep-
tion."
Mr. Spottiswoode, a scientist of eminence and
president of the British Association, stated in his
inaugural address at Dublin in August, 1878: '*It is
remarkable that the gist of the (Berliner) invention
seems to lie in obtaining and perfecting that which
electricians have hitherto most scrupulously
avoided — namely, loose contact."
Professor Barker, the United States govern-
ment's expert in the futile litigation to annul Emile
Berliner's patent, confessed in his testimony that
the invention of the loose contact transmitter at one
time passed the limits of scientific credibility. ''If
any man had come to me or to science, in 1877," said
Barker, "and proposed the idea of the microphone,
science w^ould have said: 'We have no reason to be-
lieve that that is possible; that any material exists
which will answer those purposes ; that those flight
forces will accomplish anything. ' In short, I should
have declared it impossible, and that, I think, would
have been the judgment of all scientific men at the
time."
Thus the microphone came to be — the instrument
::.IILE BEELIXEE
which renders the faintest vibrations of sound au-
dible, and. bv varying the contact pressure, in-
creases sound's intensitv.
TTe shall now trace more minutely the steps
which Berliner took to enable talkative Mother
Earth to hold her thirty billion telephone conversa-
tions a vear.
CHAPTER IX
FEOM SOAP-BOX TO 3knCE0PH0NE
BELL'S telephone — ''the star of the Centen-
nial"— was simply a good receiver. It was a
very poor transmitter, even for short distances.
You talked into it and you listened for a reply from
the same kind of instrument. "When Emile Berliner
set himself the task of making the BeU telephone
practical for all distances, it was far from certain
that what went into it as talk would come out as talk
at the other end of the line. That which emerged
was more often a jumble of sounds that was difficult
to understand and had to be repeated. At best, it
was necessary to shout the message, or clamp the
lips on to the mouthpiece. Even then, it was a
gamble whether the spoken words would be artic-
ulate. The talking itself produced the electric cur-
rent that barely went over the wire. It was the
so-called magneto-electric induction force, discov-
ei*ed by the celebrated Michael Faraday in Great
Britain in 1S31 that produced BeU's speaking cur-
rent. That was the mile-post which marks the
beginnings of Emile Berliner's researches — the
studies that led to the employment of the much
79
80 EMILE BERLINER
stronger battery current, thrown into undulations
corres;ponding to speech, and to his invention of the
microphone.
Until the year 1877 dawned Berliner's experi-
ments had partaken mainly of the theoretical. He
was now ready to give them practical form by de-
signing an apparatus embodying his conception of
the microphone principle. What the inconspicuous
young dry-goods clerk, still a virtual stranger in the
land of his adoption, was on the verge of achieving
was a battery speech transmitter, the principle of
which has never been changed or superseded. Out
of the humble lodging-house back room in Washing-
ton was about to come the magical little thing
destined to link not only cities, but countries, and
not only countries, but continents, and link not only
continents but span the whole inhabited globe.
To-day, forty-nine years after Queen Genius, in
imagination, gave Emile Berliner the accolade and
anointed him a knight of science, he pleads for a
universal language which shall bind the nations as
the telephone linked them. He believes it would end
war, as the microphone, half a century ago, led to
-the annihilation of space.
Contemplate the miracle we are now dispassion-
ately reviewing — no other term for it seems ap-
propriate. The telephone was not yet in public
use. Here was Berliner, under twenty-six, and
utterly self-taught. He had no scintilla of the scien-
tific background that predestined Alexander Graham
SOAP-BOX TO MICROPHONE 81
Bell for a career in acoustical communication. Yet
the young Hanoverian-American was by way of
giving the telephone its most vital and essential ad-
dition, the loose contact transmitter, or microphone,
and the continuous current induction coil, or trans-
former. He was to do so, most incredible of all,
within a few months from the time of starting actual
experiments. Asked innumerable times — asked often
to-day — how a man of liis environment and complete
lack of technical training managed to reach out
into the infinite and, with the precision of a trip-
hammer, hit almost instantaneously upon his objec-
tive, Emile Berliner confesses himself at a loss to
explain.
Probably a gift for concentration, and, as trained
physicists have termed it, a scientific instinct, come
as near to clearing up the mystery as anything else.
Concentration was automatic mth him. He let no
single day go by without pursuing his experiments.
Every luncheon-hour at the store in Seventh Street
would find Berliner snatching time to run around
the corner to his "laboratory" lodgings. Either a
few minutes of tinkering or a few moments of
study — he allowed no time to go to waste. Some-
times he was up before the sun, restlessly eager to
observe the further effects of the elusive electric
current on a crude contraption which a carpenter
friend had rigged up for him.
March 4, 1877, was a memorable day in Wash-
ington. Eutherford B. Hayes, Republican, was to
82 EMILE BERLINER
be inaugurated President of the United States fol-
lowing an embittered contest with Samuel J. Tilden,
Democrat, in the midst of which the grim specter of
another American civil war more than once raised
its menacing head. Hayes had been declared
the duly elected chief magistrate of the republic,
though by the slenderest possible margin in the
Electoral College, and Washington, on Inauguration
Day, was crammed with visitors in a state of excited
expectancy. Among them were friends of Berliner
who, visiting him, became so fascinated by what he
was accomplishing in the magic new realm of com-
munication that they forgot all about President-elect
Hayes and the day's adventure — a trip to the east
front of the United States Capitol for the inaugural
ceremony — on which they had set out early in the
morning.
The "miracle" that Berliner had to show them
was the membrane of a toy drum with a common
sewing needle firmly adjusted through it, a steel
dress-button, and a guitar string — the chrysalis,
though few believed it, of the telephone transmitter.
Early in April, 1877, Berliner made an iron dia-
phragm transmitter. He knocked the bottom out of
a wooden soap-box; nailed on in place of it a
piece of sheet-iron for a diaphragm, and placed a
cross-bar across the middle of the box. A com-
mon screw, passing through this cross-bar, touched
the center of the diaphragm. In fact, Berliner
soldered a polished steel button to the end of
SOAP-BOX TO MICROPHONE 83
the screw so that the button was the actual contact-
piece which touched the diaphragm.
This was a great improvement. He tried it with
a galvanometer and found that the current varied
regularly with the variation of pressure. With this
he easily got speech. The instruments were not per-
fect, certainly. But they talked ; and they will talk
to-day.
Berliner's soap-box was a receptacle seven by
twelve inches in size. The labels that still adorn it tell
the world that the original package contained ''Old
Brown Windsor Soap" made by the American Com-
pany, of Philadelphia. Undoubtedly it is the most
famous soap-box in history, though nowadays we
usually associate soap-boxes with street-corner agi-
tators. To-day it occupies an honored niche in the
United States National Museum along with other
Berliner relics. Inside of it is tacked a card on
which is printed:
Introduced in evidence in
Circuit Court of United States District
of Massachusetts
In Equity 3106 :
U. S. A. vs. American Bell Telephone
Company and Emile Berliner
Defendants' exhibit.
Berliner's Soap-Box Transmitter,
M. S. C, Special Examiner.
84 EMILE BERLINER
There is fortunately a graphic record, in Emile
Berliner's own words, of the precise chain of events
that led up to this earliest, though epochal, achieve-
ment of his. It is taken from his unchallenged
testimony in the lawsuit brought by the Government
against Berliner's patent.
''On the eighth of April, 1877," he says, "late
in the evening I had connected the instrument of the
galvanometer I have previously described and I was
joining two terminal wires for the purpose of clos-
ing the circuit. It was exceedingly quiet about the
house and on the street. In closing the circuit, I
suddenly heard a noise coming from the chaphragm,
which surprised me greatly. I thought I had mis-
taken my ears, but on repeatedly making and break-
ing the circuit a distinct and sometimes loud tick
came from the diaphragm and apparently from the
point of contact between the diaphragm and the
steel ball.
"That was entirely new to me, and I became
much agitated, because I saw immediately that I had
here a new electrical phenomenon, viz.: that sonnd
was produced without the aid of electrical mag-
netism, merely by the current itself. I quickly took
a tuning-fork which I had in my possession ; I wound
one of the wire terminals around the shank of the
tuning-fork, struck the same on the table and ap-
plied the vibrating prongs to the other terminal of
the line.
"Immediately a loud musical sound correspond-
ing in pitch to the sound of the tuning-fork came
from the iron diaphragm. I knew at that moment
that I had made an important addition to my ob-
ser\^ations, for I quickly perceived that if the dia-
phragm could give out a musical sound, it could also
reproduce speech, when, instead of an interrupted
current, an undulatory one was sent to aifect it.
SOAP-BOX TO MICROPHONE 85
^^— ^i^— ^— ^^^— ^— ^^— ^^^^^■^^^~'^— — ^— ^— ^— ~^'»^-^'^— ^""^"^^— — ^~™~"
**I also saw very plainly that I had here an ap-
paratus which would act both as transmitter and
receiver of articulate sound electrically; and that I
had something analogous to that of Mr. Bell, who
also used the same instrument both as transmitter
and receiver, but something far simpler and
cheaper.
"I had always been ambitious to have apparatus
different from that of Mr. Bell, and while I perfectly
well knew that I could not get around his undulatory
current claims, still I thought it was something to
have actually apparatus entirely different from his ;
and from that day I never touched again a Bell re-
ceiver until about a year afterward, but used a
contact transmitter also as a recei\'ing instrument.
"On the next day I got another soap-box,
brought it to the carpenter and had it fixed up in the
same way as my other one. It was ready on the next
day. I tried it on the evening of April tenth in my
own room to see if it also was sensitive to pressure,
and showed these variations of the galvanometer
needle ; and on the next morning, before going to the
store, I tried a practical experiment from my room
to the room dow^i-stairs, and made the ladies of the
house listen.
"They were very greatly surprised when I trans-
mitted as I always did, for the purpose of amusing
them, by means of interrupted currents ; they heard
the tunes loudly from the soap-box all over the
room, and when I made them listen close to the ap-
paratus and transmitted speech by variation of
pressure they reported to me much better results
than they had pre%'iously heard in other experi-
ments, and they also thought that it was very won-
derful indeed. They recognized my voice, and got
familiar sentences now and then.
"It was very difficult to adjust the apparatus. I
had to run up-stairs and down-stairs continuously,
both for adjusting the transmitter and receiver. The
86 EMILE BERLIXEE
current would heat the contact, the plate would
bulge off a little and get out of adjustment; but we
did get quite good results."
TThile it is easy to explain the action of the
microphone by increase and decrease of pressure
between two electrodes, it is not so easy to under'
stand why a loose contact should transmit speech
electrically, or in other words why an electric cur-
rent can be thrown into waves corresponding to
sound waves in all their delicacies through the
meditmi of a loose contact by means of variable
pressure.
Several theories were advanced by scientists to
explain the action at the loose contact. But Berliner
himself very early gave the only explanation that
"would stand scientific criticism. His theory was that
a loose contact between two electrodes, or ends of
conducting wires, is no real contact, but that a thin
stratum or layer of air intervenes, and that this is
the field of action where the voice vibrations with all
their delicate differences are transformed into elec-
tric vibrations exactly corresponding to the voice.
Let the reader consider that air is a conductor of
electricity precisely as is a metal wire. It does not
readily cany as much current, but, being very elas-
tic, it is highly adaptable to microphonic action.
That there exists a layer of air between two
electrodes in loose contact with each other has been
proved in two ways, one by Berliner himself. He
placed a loose contact, held together by light spring
SOAP-BOX TO MICROPHONE 87
pressure, iu a closed box which was connected to an
air pump that could exhaust the air from that box.
Careful and repeated measurements showed that
more current passed over the contact when the air
was exhausted ; or, putting it more scientifically, the
electrical resistance of the contact was lower in a
vacuum than in air. The proof offered by others
than Berliner consisted of looking through a loose
contact with a powerful tele-microscope, when it was
found that there was a thin gap between the two
electrodes and that they did not actually touch each
other.
Therefore, it will be seen that when sound strikes
the diaphragm, which actuates the loose contact in
a microphone, it changes the thickness of that thiu
layer of air at each ^^ibration and the electric cur-
rent which passes is therefore thrown into electric
vibrations corresponding to the sound waves. It
may correspondingly be a surprise to some, to learn
that the term ''talking on the air," so commonly
used by broadcasters to-day, is more scientifically
correct than is popularly realized.
The curious receiving action of the loose contact
has never been fully clarified. According to Emile
Berliner's caveat of 1877, it is due to a force of re-
pulsion at the contact, which is variable according
to the strength of the passing current.
CHAPTER X
BERLINER FILES HIS CAVEAT
NOW we approach an episode in the life of
Emile Berliner that brands him, perhaps as
much as any single achievement in his whole career,
as a favored child of genius. Before he went to bed
on the night of April 8, 1877, he made the rough
draft of a caveat describing the telephonic results
he had just achieved. Four days later he made a
clean copy of the draft. Then he determined, with-
out either legal or scientific aid, to conduct his own
negotiations with the United States Patent Office
covering the invention of the microphone. Under
the former patent laws of the United States, a
caveat was a description of an invention designed
to be patented, lodged in the Patent Office before the
patent itself was applied for. It operated as a bar
to other applications respecting the same invention.
Modern manufacturing corporations employ the
great brains of the patent-law profession at fancy
fees to draw their patent documents.
Filing a caveat did not imply that the inventor
considered his invention incomplete in the legal
sense, but at most that he hoped to improve its form
FILES HIS CAVEAT - 89
of embodiment. The patent statute speaks of ''a
person wlio makes any new invention or discovery,
and desires time to mature the same." The person
has ''made" the invention, but more mature thought
is eventually to apply the finishing touches. Ber-
liner was experimenting in that direction.
His financial condition at this time was such
that he did not hesitate to avail himself of the
privilege of drawing his own caveat, at a cost of ten
dollars, instead of filing an application, which would
have cost at least sixty dollars. Think of the plight
of the man who facilitated the perfection of modern
telephony, having to hesitate between the advis-
ability of taking by himself a legal step of tran-
scendent importance, because it was cheap, or hiring
an expert to do it for him at a cost of fifty dollars
more!
As a matter of fact, Berliner's economic state
required him to resort to every possible economy.
Describing his plight at that time, in the course of
the subsequent telephone litigation, Berliner said:
"I had contracted some debts in 1876, in New
York, which had not been fully paid when I returned
to Washington. In the few months I was out of a
job I had not earned anything at all. My place as
bookkeeper brought me fifteen dollars a week, or
something of that kind. I don't remember exactly
the wages I had in the latter part of 1876 at Mr.
Behrend's store in "Washington, but I was out of a
position for a couple of months on account of the
failure of my employer. After that I earned an
90 KMTT.K BERTJNER
avora^o of about twelve dollars a week with Mr.
Bell rend."
Lat(!r, duriii^c the same tostinumy, B(!rlnior tOHti-
lied that while he was employed in the i^'ahlberg
laboratory at New York, he was paid six dollars a
w(M'k, <Mii(l li;i(l to Icjive that work because Fahlberg
oouhl not afford to pay him more.
]5erUiier's caveat was tiled and dated April 14,
1877. 0])viously non-superstitious, ho had sworn to
it the day previous, April thirteenth. It was com-
posed niid wiitten (entirely by himself, without out-
side aid of any clmracter whatsoever. Ho had
famiruirized himself with the terminoloKy of the
Pat(;jit Oflieo on such oeeasions, l)ut seoriied the
Hervie(!S of a pat<(nt attoriKiy. The preamble of the
Berliner caveat read:
Tii(! petition of lOniih; B(!rliner, of llic (!ily of
AVashingtoti, in the District of ( /oliiiiibi.'i, re-
spectfully r(!presents:
Tlud, he h;is made ecirtain Improvements in
Meetrical Telegrjii)hy, or Telephony, and that
he is now engaged in makinj^ experiiruMits for
the purpose of perfecting the same, prepara-
tory to applying for Lettcirs I'atent therefor.
He ther(!fore prays that Ihe subjoined dcfscrix)-
tion of his invention m;iy be filed as a caveat* in
the coiihdential archives of the Patent Ollice.
EMlLli] BEULINEB,
818 Seventh Street, N. W.
'Bod Ai)pi'ri(lix for full Uixl. of Caveat.
FILES HIS CAVEAT 91
It "Was followed by the statutory ''Specifica-
tion," of which the following opening paragraph
tells the story of the microphone in a nutshell:
''Part I. The following is a description of my
newly-invented apparatus for transmitting sound of
any kind by means of a wire or any other conductor
of electricity^, to any distance.
"It is a fact and a scientific principle that objects
near each other which are charged with electricity
of the same polarity repel each other. It is also a
fact that if at a point of contact between two ends of
a galvanic current, the pressure between both sides
of the contact becomes weakened, the current pass-
ing becomes intense, as, for instance, if an operator
on a Morse instrument does not press down the key
with a certain firmness, the sounder at the receiving
instrument does work much weaker than if the full
pressure of the hand would have been used. Based
on these two facts, I liave constructed a simple ap-
paratus for transmitting sound along a line of a
galvanic current in the following manner, etc."
James J. Storrow, chief counsel for the Bell
Telephone Company and in his day without a supe-
rior as a patent lawyer, and with few peers, thus
eulogized Berliner's caveat, which, from the hour of
its submission, ranked as one of the most remark-
able documents ever filed with the United States
Patent Office:
"This now classical document, unrivaled for its
concise accuracj^ and completeness, worthy to rank
with Bell's patent (drawn also by the inventor him-
self) was the unaided production of this young man
of twenty-five. It is impossible not to feel that Ber-
liner had made the invention and matured the sub-
92 EMILE BERLINER
ject, and that he realized its importance. It was no
vague and half-formed idea, of the sort that men
abandon. No one ever throws away so perfect an
offspring of his brain. There is one passage in it,
which of itself is enough to prove that it was the re-
sult, not of thought alone, but of thought carried out
by experiment."
Mr. Joseph Lyons, assistant examiner of elec-
tricity in the electrical di\dsion of the Patent Office
from 1880 to 1885, testifying during the telephone
litigation, said:
**When I came into the electrical division (De-
cember, 1880), I asked for information on the
particular point of whether anybody had anticipated
Emile Berliner in the invention of the microphone,
and I found that all assistant examiners in the room
with one voice declared Mr. Berliner as the first in-
ventor of the microphone. Under such circum-
stances, I was not in a condition to question the fact,
and, moreover, I found among the records of the
office Mr. Berliner's caveat of April, 1877, which de-
scribed a microphone in such clear and unmistakable
terms that there could be no question about it. ' '
The new departure in Emile Berliner's experi-
ments set the pace and charted the direction for bis
future work in telephony. Now realizing that he
had something different from Bell's telephone, he
labored unceasingly to improve the loudness of the
loose contact as a receiver. It was not until many
months later that he came into possession of a
modern Bell instrument and was able to notice that
the loose contact was so wonderfully sensitive a
transmitter.
FILES HIS CAVEAT 93
For a time the Bell magneto telephone remained
in obscurity. The country talked of it more or less
vaguely and the newspapers wrote about it, but
people never listened over a telephone, or ever saw
one. For the most part Bell's invention was coming
to be looked upon as a plaything. Now and then men
would sheepishly confess their unwillingness to
''make fools of themselves" by leaning against a
wall and talking into a wooden box ^Yiih. no apparent
result except a metallic echo of their own voice!
Little progress in the new art seemed to be in
sight. All of a sudden came the sensational an-
nouncement that Bell's telephones were now being
used over longer distances and that some people in
Massachusetts were actually using the telephone for
inter-communication between their houses !
But Emile Berliner was still in Wasliington wait-
ing for his opportunity.
CHAPTER XI
THE COXTIXUOUS CURRENT TRANSFORMER
NEARLY everybody who is interested in radio
knows that the two vital instruments neces-
sary for broadcasting are the microphone and the
so-called transformers. They are parts of the vast
inheritance which radio has received from tele-
phony. Both of these were conceived and used by
Emile Berliner for sending the voice by electricity
in the spring of 1877. He discovered that the carry-
ing power of the microphone could be much en-
hanced by combining an induction coil in circuit
T\ith it.
In the practical arts it is always the aim of the
scientific man to work with simple means and with
the least expense. Thus, if it is possible to operate
a telephone transmitter with one or two cells of
battery, it is superfluous to apply a powerful dy-
namo current or a battery of one hundred cells.
Berliner was far-sighted enough to take these re-
quirements into consideration. Within a month of
the time he had worked out the microphone, he
evolved the idea of adding the highly important
transformer.
94
THE TRANSFORMER 95
In those early years, the transformer was known
as an induction coil or incluctorium. It transforms
currents of low voltage or low electric pressure into
high voltage or high electric pressure. In the ver-
nacular, as used even by telephone people, the trans-
former '' boosts" the current. Before Berliner's
application of the transformer to telephony, trans-
former induction coils were employed only for
making sparks, giving shocks, shomng the luminous
effects of the electric current in vacuum tubes, and
setting off mines containing explosive mixtures.
For all these purposes, a battery current was passed
through the inner coil, or primary, of heavj^ "wire,
and when this battery current was suddenly inter-
rupted a spark jumped from one end of the sec-
ondary or outer coil, which was wound around the
inner primary coil, to the other end or terminal of
the secondary.
In April and May, 1877, Berliner, who had no
trained assistant to help him, had to run incessantly
from one end of the line to the other when his crude
contact telephones did not work well. It was cor-
respondingly diflScult for him to readjust the deli-
cate contacts in order to make them work satisfac-
torily. Being full}'' familiar with the induction
coil, he conceived the idea of putting one of his in-
struments mth a small battery into the primary coil
of an inductorium at one station and the second in-
strument, which was at the other end of the line,
with a small battery, into the primary of another
96 EMILE BERLINER
inductorium. The secondary coils of both induc-
toria he connected to the line.
This arrangement made each of the contact in-
struments independent of the other and greatly
facilitated keeping them well adjusted. Incidentally
it foreshadowed what afterward became common
practise in practical telephony.
It is also an historic fact that this was the first
time that any induction coil or transformer was
ever used with undulatory, continuous currents.
This usage became the prototype of all subsequent
transformers used by the million in power stations,
electric light plants, and, to-day, in radio. The
microphone and continuous current transformer,
both invented by Emile Berliner forty-nine years
ago, are indispensable to the science of broadcast-
ing, and probably always will be. It goes without
saying that transformers used in telephony operate
by means of Berliner's continuous current system.
Two weeks after Berliner filed his caveat in the
United States Patent Office in April, 1877, describ-
ing the microphone, Thomas A. Edison filed a
patent application describing a transmitter in which
a metal diaphragm vibrated against a large flat disk
covered with graphite, a form of carbon. The action
consisted in bringing a larger or smaller area of
the graphited disk in touch with the diaphragm at
each vibration. In the following year Mr. Edison
developed his compressed lampblack button, which
acted by increase and decrease of internal pressure
THE TBANSFORMER 97
on the lampblack. But it was Berliner who during
the summer of 1877 first used a hard carbon micro-
phone precisely as such contacts have alwaj^s been
used by the Bell Telephone Company and later in
the radio microphone. Multiple contacts introduced
later were mentioned by Berliner in his caveat of
April 14, 1877.
The modern telephone transmitter, or micro-
phone, of which the radio microphone is only a
larger fonn, contains a box filled with granules of
hard carbon, each in loose contact w^ith one another.
It is noteworthy that, foreseeing this possibility,
Berliner's caveat said: ''There may be more than
one point of contact becoming effected by the same
vibrations. ' '
Berliner, now having achieved continuously
promising results, concluded to apply for a regular
patent. For the purpose he sought the services of a
patent attorney in order to have his application pro-
fessionally drawn and filed. Acting as his own
patent solicitor, Berliner had invested only ten dol-
lars for a caveat. He now engaged an attorney, one
James L. Norris, whose fees, Berliner thought,
would be within reach of his slender purse, to over-
see the drafting of an application for patent. The
young inventor was blissfully unconscious that he
was thrusting upon Norris a piece of electrical wiz-
ardry so utterly strange that even the most erudite
of patent lawyers of the time would hardly have
been equal to it. Nor did Berliner dream that one
98 EMILE BERLINER
day his ingenuousness would elicit from the eminent
patent lawyers of the Bell Telephone Company the
lamentation that he had not, as in the case of his
caveat, drafted his own application for patent.
During the luncheon hour of a late May day in
1877, young Berliner hurried into Norris' law office,
which occupied a small up-stairs room on Seventh
Street opposite the Patent Office. By the window
stood a man contemplatively immersed in the fav-
orite male pastime of the era — tobacco-chewing. He
was unshaven and generally unkempt, and in his eye
there was a groggy squint. Berliner stated his er-
rand.
''Coombs," said lawyer ISTorris to the unprepos-
sessing person at the window, who turned out to be
a ''scrivener" and, as Berliner observed, a marks-
man of no mean talent on the tobacco-spitting range,
"take down this young man's ideas and write them
into a patent specification."
Charles L. Coombs, the scrivener, as the patent
litigation later was to bring out, received from Nor-
ris two dollars apiece for drawing up patent speci-
fications. After two half-hour lunch periods spent
with Berliner, Coombs evolved the microphone
specification. It was, of course, before the time of
typewriters. Next day Berliner received a flimsy
letter-press tissue-paper copy of Coombs' profes-
sional masterpiece in the form of a specification,
written by hand in ink. In spots the copy was
almost illegible.
MiOROPHOXE OF March 4, 1877. Used in Lawsuits ix 1879
Still Transmitting Today the Ticking of a Watch and Every
Other Sound
Microphone of Berliner's Caveat, April 14, 1877, With Mouth-
piece Added
TRA.A/JS-A1/ TT£^R
7~/Z/KA/S7^0/^/y/^^
BELL - BERLINER SYSTEM
/A" OS£ S lives 1879
/R£C^/VSR
BE/fLfNER'S B/^TTERY SYSTEM
yii-ifiL ( n/CRORHOA/E } IS77.
THE TRANSFORMER 99
Berliner had difficulty in deciphering Coombs'
draft, but eventually discovered that it contained a
number of poorly expressed statements. Meantime
the application had been duly filed in the Patent
Office under date of June 4, 1877, and the only rem-
edy was to introduce amendments correcting
Coombs' text. Berliner lost no time in filing these
corrections, in full accordance with the legal proce-
dure provided for such cases. In later years the
forces opposing the Berliner patent made these
amendments, necessitated by Coombs' slovenly
work, one of the major pretexts for assailing the
validity of Berliner's rights. The fact was that by
the time the Patent Office reached Berliner's appli-
cation, it had been corrected in every essential de-
tail.
Berliner's invention struck the skilled examiners
in the Patent Office as so wholly novel that in a let-
ter addressed to Norris, dated September 19, 1877,
they expressed doubts that so simple an instrument
as a plate and a screw in contact with it could act as
a telephone receiving apparatus. Berliner there-
upon invited the examiners to his lodgings and con-
vinced them of the soundness of his invention.
Among the visitors who from time to time came
to Berliner's room to observe his experiments and
marvel at his achievements was A. S. Solomons, a
prominent bookdealer. Mr. Solomons was a citizen
of Washington of so eminent standing that he was
selected as chairman of the joint committee of citi-
100 EMILE BERLINER
zens and appointees of Congress to super\dse
memorial services in the House of Representa-
tives in memory of Professor Morse, inventor of the
telegraph. Mr. Solomons was apparently very much
impressed with what Berliner showed him, and,
before leaving, asked if the inventor would not like
to be introduced to Professor Joseph Henry, who
was an electrician of great distinction and had been
at the head of the Smithsonian Institution for a
generation. Professor Henry was the sympathizing
confidant of inventors in scientific branches and a
discriminating extinguisher of pretenders.
Berliner naturally expressed the greatest eager-
ness to meet Professor Henry, and about the middle
of July, 1877, accompanied Mr. Solomons to the
Smithsonian Institution for that purpose. The inven-
tor of the microphone explained to Professor Henry
what he had, and the latter revealed the liveliest
interest in Berliner's story. He said that at any
time Berliner had the instruments ready to show, he
would be pleased to have them brought to the Smith-
sonian and inspect their workings. Berliner subse-
quently took them there and exhibited them.
Professor Henry was fascinated and addressed
encouraging words to Berliner.
On the second of October, 1877, there appeared
in the National Republican, of Washington, D. C,
the following short account of the episode :
''Yesterday afternoon there was a very interest-
ing exliibition at the Smithsonian Institution before
THE TRANSFORMER 101
Professor Henry of a number of discoveries and in-
ventions of Mr. E. Berliner, of this city. The inven-
tions consisted of improved apparatus and modes of
electric communication. The first instrument
exhibited was the * contact telephone' for transmit-
ting sound vibrations from plate to plate, so as to
enable persons to communicate. The second was the
'electric spark telephone,' which produced the same
result by another process, that of the transmission
of a spark. The third instrument was a 'telephonic
transfer,' designed for transmitting sound by
changes in the intensity of the circuit."
Berliner filed an application for patent of his in-
vention of the continuous current transformer on
October 16, 1877. A patent was issued to him on
Januarj'- 15, 1878. Within a comparatively few
months now, Berliner's unaided struggles were
about to come to an end. He had invented the speak-
ing microphone and thus completed the telephone.
His rights and theories were indisputable, though
soon to be long and bitterly contested. And so we
pass to the next phase of Emile Berliner's develop-
ment— the realization of his aspiration to play an
integral part in the practical exploitation of the
telephone.
CHAPTER XII
BERLINER JOINS THE BELL COMPANY
THE year 1878 was to be the year of practical
destiny for Emile Berliner in the field of tele-
phony— the stage of transition from hopes, dreams
and pioneer achievements to the realm of actual
association with the industry. Having invented the
microphone, which completed Bell's telephone, and
patented the continuous current transformer, which
still further improved it, Berliner set promptly
about the business of reaping the material rewards
of his trials and triumphs.
By this time commercial telephony had staggered
into its swaddling clothes. Bell, the wizard, ^\dth his
assistant, AVatson, an enthusiastic mechanic, and his
far-sighted backers, Hubbard, dreamer and builder
of air castles, and Thomas Sanders, the moneyed
man of the combination, organized in Boston the
nucleus of the Bell System, and began to improve,
manufacture and install a few magneto telephones,
to be used between individual homes and offices. The
idea of inter-connecting the isolated groups soon
followed, and the first switchboard was a natural,
though at that time a very crude, development.
Within a week of the granting of his transformer
102
JOINS BELL COMPANY 103
patent, Berliner placed himself in communication
with the lawyers of the Telephone Company of New
York (a subsidiary of the Bell Company), Messrs.
Dickerson and Beaman, with offices in the old New-
Yorker Staats-Zeitung Building in City Hall
Square. In these modern days of Brobdingnagian
finance, when capitalists and corporations juggle
with millions as an every-hour pastime, it is difficult
to read without a smile the following result of Ber-
liner's baptismal dip into the commercial waters of
telephony :
**New York, Jan. 22, 1878.
*'Emile Berliner, Esq.,
818 7th St., N. W., Washington, D. C,
*'My dear Sir:
"Yours of Jan. 20 and 21 received. I do not sup-
pose that you seriously believe that your invention
is worth $12,000 at the present time. The entire
stock of the Telephone Company of New York is
only $20,000. So you see that your interest would
make a large share of that company. However that
may be, we think it worth while to communicate with
you further in the matter.
*'I am therefore authorized to say in behalf of
the Telephone Company of New York that they will
be glad to have you call upon them here, in relation
to the sale of your matters in the Patent Office and
to such other arrangements as may seem advisable ;
and they offer to pay your expenses during such
visit to them here.
''Please answer whether or not it will be con-
venient for you to come and meet with the managers
of the company in this matter. If so, as I before
said, they will be responsible for your expenses.
"Yours truly,
"E. N. Dickerson."
104 EMILE BERLINER
Berliner, though as yet a callow novice in the
tortuous field of business, returned an adroit reply,
which lost nothing in directness because of its quaint
English :
'^Washington, D. C,
"January 24, 1878.
*'E. N. Dickerson Jr., Esq.,
''New York City.
"Dear Sir:
"Your favor of the 22nd inst. came to hand. I
fail to see the correctness of your argument to make
the value of an invention dependent upon the capital
of a Stock Company.
"Still, aside from a present result of our ne-
gotiations, I believe that a meeting with the mana-
gers of the Telephone Company would only be
promotive to general telephonic interests. Where-
fore I beg to accept their very polite otfer made
through you and will call at your office at about 10
A.. M. this coming Saturday.
"Yours very truly,
"E. Berliner. '»
Mr. Dickerson acknowledged Berliner's letter
next day in a telegram over the wires of the
"Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company," saying:
"Glad to see you Saturday. Bring your instru-
ments." Berliner went to New York, but negotia-
tions with the Telephone Company came to naught.
Hilborne L. Roosevelt and Charles A. Cheever, its
managers, were interested in his apparatus, but not
to the extent of desiring to acquire it. Yet the visit
to the Telephone Company was by no means fruit-
less. It led directly to relations between Gardiner
JOINS BELL COMPANY 105
G. Hubbard, Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law
and first president of the Bell Telephone Company
at Boston — relations which were speedily to even-
tuate in the realization of Berliner's burning desire
to join the interests now bent upon exploiting tele-
phony on the grand scale.
The founders of the Bell System had very little
money, but they had great faith. They were em-
barked upon a long and arduous struggle to estab-
lish a telephone service, and make it self-supporting,
while developing and improving the telephone itself,
interesting the public in its use and inducing
investors to provide means for its growth.
Every sort of an obstacle seemed to block their
progress. Bell's patents were attacked, formidable
competition appeared and technical difficulties which
seemed insurmountable had to be met. Emile Ber-
liner, though blissfully ignorant of it at this stage
of his endeavors, was himself cast for the title role
in a drama of litigation destined to be almost end-
less.
Nevertheless, there came to the Bell group a
period of growth and expansion. By lectures and
demonstrations the telephone was brought to public
attention at home and abroad. A demand for in-
struments arose in many cities almost simulta-
neously, a demand greater than it was possible to
supply immediately. Li spite of its constant strug-
gle for existence, the Bell group adopted a policy
of progress and improvement, and it was in conse-
106 EMILE BERLINER
quence of that program that Berliner's ambition in
the Bells' direction was ultimately to be gratified.
Berliner's first contact with the Bell interests
was the result of a letter of introduction from the
management of the Telephone Company of New
York:
The Telephone Company of New York
32 Tribune Building
''New York, Jan. 26, 1878.
''Hon. G. G. Hubbard,
"Dear Sir:
"This will introduce to you Mr. E. Berliner who
has a very interesting Telephone that I would like
you to examine, as some of the principles are very
curious and may be of much importance. He lives in
Washington and will be pleased to show his ap-
paratus.
"Very truly yours,
"Hilborne L. Roosevelt."
Two days later the Telephone Company wrote
Berliner that Mr. Hubbard was now in New York
and the Berliner apparatus would be explained to
him there, so that he could examine it the more dili-
gently when he went to Washington the following
week. "You might send me two machines to try,"
Mr. Roosevelt added, "when you have them in good
shape. Your experiments have interested me very
much. I will be pleased to hear from you from time
to time, and will notify you before I shall come to
Washington. I will also report your offer in the
matter of experiments."
JOINS BELL COMPANY 107
This correspondence marks the real inauguration
of Berliner's association with the purely commercial
side of telephony. Thenceforward there was an un-
interrupted exchange of letters between the inventor
and the men who were on the threshold of becoming
the telephone magnates of America. The latter
undertook forthwith to examine Berliner's appara-
tus and his patents, with a view to their acquisition
if they turned out to be as promising as they seemed.
As for Berliner, he devoted himself assiduously dur-
ing the spring of 1878 to perfecting, through cease-
less experiment, the principles and mechanism he
had already worked out.
Meantime, ominous clouds were gathering in the
United States Patent Office. These clouds, which do
not always develop a silver lining, are technically
known as "interferences." When several inventors
come into the Patent Office mth applications for
patents that apply to the same or similar inventions,
the applications are "stopped" by the examiners
and referred to a bureau which formally declares
what patent law terms an "interference." There-
upon, every rival inventor is required to file a state-
ment detailing just when he conceived his own
invention and when it was put into practise. The
next step is a complicated and protracted legal in-
quiry, which may last for months, or even years.
Eventually the inventor deemed worthy of priority
rights obtains his patent.
During 1877 and early in 1878 other inventors
108 EMILE BERLINER
than Berliner filed at the Patent Office their applica-
tions for transmitter patents. Thus it came about
that on March 16, 1878, an extensive ''interference"
was declared by the Commissioner of Patents.
The Bell Telephone Company was keeping an
eagle eye upon all developments in the telephone
field, particularly in the domain of patents. At the
end of the spring of 1878 the Bell interests were rep-
resented at Washington by Gardiner G. Hubbard, as
trustee. The Bell telephone at this stage was much
talked about, but little believed in. Practically no
outsider was willing to venture the investment of
capital in it. The idea of conversation over tele-
graph wires continued to be regarded as a chimera.
Hubbard's job in Washington was mainly to **sell"
the practicability of the telephone to anybody who
would stand still long enough to listen to his per-
suasive ''drummer's" story of its miraculous pos-
sibilities. A stately, gray-bearded, confidence-
inspiring figure, Hubbard seldom failed to carry
conviction. He trundled his pair of Bell telephones
around Washington tirelessly, seeking opportuni-
ties to show them to the most prominent men he
could approach. One of these was Theodore N.
Vail, the virile young superintendent of the United
States Railway Mail Service.
Presently the Bell group had its attention called
to the possible development of a transmitter oper-
ated by a battery. Forthwith they wrote their
Washington attorney, an exceptionally shrewd law-
JOINS BELL COMPANY 109
1^ II I I Til I -ll-r I
yer named Anthony Pollok, to investigate the ''in-
terference" declared by the Patent Office and find
out whether there were any transmitter patents on
file which the Bell interests ought to acquire or con-
trol. Pollok made an exhaustive survey of the sit-
uation and reported to the Bell Telephone Company
that the only application which, in his judgment, was
worthy of their interest was the one filed by Emile
Berliner on June 4, 1877, covering the loose contact
transmitter.
Four names at this time stood out in the ''inter-
ference" cases before the Patent Office. They were
Professor Alexander Graham Bell, scientifically
educated and with interested and influential men
at his back; Professor Elisha Gray, of Chicago, a
learned scientist of middle age ; Professor Amos E.
Dolbear, of Tufts College; and Thomas A. Edison,
already a well-known and recognized inventor in the
field of telegraphy. Such was the galaxy of tech-
nical talent and financial strength against which
Emile Berliner — be it remembered, still a "counter-
jumper " in an inconspicuous store in Washington —
confronted in the struggle for recognition of his
rights in the United States Patent Office.
It was in the midst of his uninterrupted experi-
ments at his rooming-house "laboratory" on Sixth
Street, Washington, that Berliner about this time
struck up an acquaintance with the young woman
who was destined to become, and still is, his life
partner. Now and then, Berliner would stretch a
110 EMILE BERLIXER
line across the street from his lodgings to the home
of friendly neighbors named Adler. Eventually he
met the two attractive daughters of the house, one
of whom he proceeded to woo and win. It was pio-
neering in telephony that resulted in Alexander
Graham Bell and the daughter of Gardiner G. Hub-
bard becoming man and vriie. Xow, the same sort
of tinkering with talk transmission was to lead to
the altar Emile Berliner and Cora Adler.
One day a messenger boy electrified the clerical
staff at the Behrend store on Seventh Street by ask-
ing for Emile Berliner and announcing that the lat-
ter's presence was desired at the office of Anthony
PoUok. PoUok's name was widely known in "Wash-
ington. A summons to his legal throne was a badge
of distinction. Berliner's fellow-clerks were cor-
respondingly impressed. Pollok, like Berliner, was
European-bom. The inventor found the lawyer to
be a man of swarthy complexion, keen-eyed and
adorned with a goatee affected by Frenchmen of the
era. Pollok talked with directness and decisioru
"The Bell Telephone Company," he said, going
straight to the point of the inter\"iew, "is interested
in your invention. Thomas A. Watson, the superin-
tendent of the company, w^ould like to come here
and see your apparatus."
Berliner was naturally elated over this prima
facie evidence that he was at last within sight of
his cherished goal — a close scientific identification
with the interests which were converting the tele-
JOINS BELL COMPANY lU
phone from a crudity, the ultimate possibilities of
which were not yet faintly imagined, into a public
utility. It was always as a scientist that Berliner
longed for recognition in the field in which he now
was an acknowledged pioneer. Amid such emotions
and secret anticipations he awaited the approaching
interview T^ith Watson — the man to whom Bell had
transmitted the first complete and coherent message
ever telephoned.
The superintendent of the Bell Company came
to Washington. It was a tall, energetic, intensely
practical-looking New Englauder who swung open
the front door of the Behrend store one dull rainy
day and proclaimed that he had business there with
a young person named Emile Berliner. The idhng
clerks, ''mute, inglorious" like all clerks in humble
shops since time immemorial, were visibly awed,
for it was an unusual happening on humdrum
Seventh Street. The boss gave Berliner time off
to ''tinker" with his "toys" in his lodgings around
the corner, as soon as the inventor-clerk disclosed
the eminent identity of his ^dsitor. Berliner led
."Watson aromid to the little room on Sixth Street,
showed him pridefully the magic soap-box, and then
the pair clattered down the two flights of stairs and
out to the barn in the rear of the house, to which
Berliner's "telephone line" ran.
No other man at that time, unless it was Alex-
ander Graham Bell himself, was so familiar with
jthe art of electrical acoustics, and therefore so well
112 EMILE BERLINER
able to recognize new merit in that realm, as Thomas
A. "Watson. With his own hands he had shaped the
original Bell mechanism. He knew what the Bell
telephone would do. Also, he knew what it would
not do. While Berliner's apparatus was almost the
crudest thing imaginable, Watson w^as prepared, by
the process of elimination, to see at once that here
was a logical and an entirely novel way of sending
voice undulations by mre. The Bell telephone
"wafted" them. But in this new contrivance, after
being most minutely and perfectly caught, they were
sent, and the power that sent them could even be
automatically ''stepped up." Realizing that he was
inspecting a telephone system that ignored Bell's
mechanical contrivance entirely, Watson, in far-
sighted vision, pondered thoughtfully w^hat this
thing might lead to. After a brief twenty minutes,
he concluded his visit wdth the impressive words,
*'We will want that, Mr. Berliner, You will hear
from us in a few days."
Watson, returning from Washington, seemed
convinced that the Bells' hope lay in young Berliner.
His instrument was unique; he was the originator
of the continuous current transformer, the only one
directly apxjlicable to the telephone; he already
possessed the xmtent for this (which idea was also
being usurped and utilized by the Bells' menacing
and aggressive rivals, the Western Union) ; and in
Berliner's eye Watson detected the glint of genius.
During the next few weeks a flow of correspondence
JOINS BELL COMPANY 113
came to Berliner from Watson, Vail and Hubbard,
pa\dng the way for his eventual connection mth the
Bell interests.
In June, 1878, Berliner submitted to the Bell
Telephone Company through Gardiner G. Hubbard
at Washington an offer wliich provoked from the
latter the following reply:
''Dear Sir:
*'I received your note two days ago. Your prop-
osition seems to be fair excepting in regard to the
time you allow for accepting it. I could not con-
clude to accept it until I see Mr. Watson, who is at
Chicago.
'*If you \viU. extend the time and make it six
weeks, I think Ave can make an arrangement \nth
you. Until after Congress adjourns, I can not agree
to attend to any new business. AVill you please
bring your new telephones to my room? I should
like to try them mth you."
The Bell interests had now engaged as their gen-
eral manager the man who was destined to be of
profound influence, during the ensuing generation,
upon telephone and telegraph development. He was
that masterful ''high voltage" personality, hon
vivant, and born organizer, Theodore N. Vail, the
superintendent of the United States Railway Mail
Service, whose interest in the telephone was first
aroused by Gardiner G. Hubbard. Vail, now head-
quartered in New York, was almost Heaven-sent for
the Bell group's purposes. He had moved with such
celerity on behalf of his new associates that mthin
114 EMILE BERLINER
a few weeks his forceful and magnetic methods re-
sulted in reorganizing their company with genuine
capital of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars —
a mint of money for a new enterprise in those days.
On July 2, 1878, Vail wrote Emile Berliner as
follows :
*'I intended to see you when in Washington
lately in regard to your letter to Mr. Hubbard con-
cerning your improvements in telephony.
**I wish you would continue your proposition,
so as to cover the month of July. During this month
we can come to some understanding, which will be
to our mutual advantage. I am speaking now as
general manager of the Bell Telephone Company.
"By that time we will have settled our head-
quarters in New York, and arranged matters now
pending that will influence to a certain extent any
arrangement we can make with you as to your enter-
ing the service of the Company, etc. "We have about
made arrangements with a company manufactur-
ing telephone instruments here, for facilities to ex-
periment, etc.
''I shall be in Washington by the 16th and will
see you after my arrival. Please write me whether
you will consent to this extension of time, etc."
A week after receipt of Vail's letter, Berliner
heard from Thomas A. Watson, superintendent of
the Bell Telephone at Boston, enclosing a money
order for four dollars and fifty cents, covering the
cost of certain legal papers, and adding:
''Our Company is being reorganized and the ex-
ecutive offices will probably be transferred to New
York. When that is done, I think some arrange-
JOINS BELL COMPANY 115
ment will be made with you by which you can enter
our service."
On July 17, 1878, true to his pledge. Vail, writ-
ing Berliner from the Post Office Department in
Washington, said:
''What time to-day could I see you for a few
moments in relation to telephone matters? If you
could make it convenient to step in my office, I Avould
not detain you long, and think we could settle on
some terms."
Matters now were moving so rapidly in the nego-
tiations between Berliner and the Bell people — Vail,
Hubbard and ^Vatson — ^that the coveted contract
providing for Berliner's entering the Bell com-
pany's employment was imminent. Bell headquar-
ters was now at 66 and 68 Reade Street, New York.
On September 7, 1878, Berliner heard from Hubbard
at New York in these terms:
"Mr. Vail returned last night sick, so I have not
seen him. He sent me a line saying you would be
here on Monday wdth full copies of your specifica-
tions. I have written Mr. Watson to come on from
Boston, to meet you at that time. So if you can not
come, telegraph what day you will be here. It is,
however, important that we lose no time."
It was about at this time that the Western Union,
with its net of wires spreading across the country
and its unlimited capital, had decided to enter the
telephone field. To that end it had begun to put out
imitation receivers and a battery transmitter de-
vised by Thomas A. Edison.
116 EMILE BERLINER
''Give us a good transmitter!" became the cry of
the Bell Company's eager managers, now almost
frantic in their efforts to be first in the telephone
field and thwart the Western Union's bold bid for
supremacy. The Bells wanted Berliner's ideas,
and they wanted him. They were rapidly whipping
their affairs into shape under Vail's energetic gen-
eralship and, once possessed of a good transmitter,
were confident of beating back the Western Union's
attack.
Vail was in Washington occasionally during the
ensuing weeks and met Berliner by appointment.
The two men, came cordially to like each other.
Vail's faith in Berliner and in what he could do for
the telephone gained fresh impetus when he learned
that a caveat, a supposedly secret paper fully de-
scribing the microphone, had been deposited by
Berliner in the Patent Office as early as April 14,
1877. Vail was impressed too, by the fact that
this young inventor possessed enough business
acumen not to disclose the secrets of this docu-
ment, even under tempting circumstances, until he
had actually signed a contract with the company.
Here was manifestly not the average ''impractical
inventor." Vail discerned, on the contrary, a
mentality of unusual symmetry.
How to make a satisfactory agreement on the
basis of nothing but a prospective patent already
blocked in an "interference" was the difficulty that
existed when Berliner talked "business" with Vail,
JOINS BELL COMPANY 117
It showed conclusively that the Bell Company, after
carefully studying the situation, not only concluded
that Berliner's conception of a battery transmitter
was scientifically correct, but that he had a first-
class chance to prevail in the Patent Office.
David Edward Hughes, in England, had only a short
time before sustained the Berliner idea in his ex-
periments wdth loose contacts. All this, and the
transformer patent which Berliner already pos-
sessed, made the latter entirely too valuable a man
for tlie Bells to lose.
Hence, by September they made Berliner the
kind of offer that appealed to him. Unknown to
his friends or employer, a two-day trip which he
made to New York that month was for the express
purpose of signing an agreement with the Bell Com-
pany. It provided for a moderate salary and a
royalty on export transmitters. All that Berliner
was able to turn over to the Company was the con-
trol of his caveats, and his patent applications that
were still pending in the Patent Office, as well as the
use of his induction coil, or transformer, patent.
Several years afterward the Bell Company paid
Berliner a lump sum and largely increased his
annual retainer, which took the place of salary, be-
cause he later left Boston and went to work for him-
self.
CHAPTER XIII
BERLINER COMPLETES THE TELEPHONE
THROUGHOUT his seven American years of
stress, struggle and final success, Emile Ber-
liner had never known a day of illness worthy of
the name. But now the cumulative effect of physical
and mental strain was to exact inevitable toU from
him.
Behind the young inventor lay eighteen months
of tremendous effort. He had experimented cease-
lessly and intensively with his telephone apparatus.
He had, virtually unaided, taken the first hurdles at
the United States Patent Office. He had weathered
a maiden experience with "Big Business." Always
a conscientious purveyor of gents' furnishings and
bookkeeper at the Behrend store, he had burned the
candle at both ends, employing each and every mo-
ment off duty in tinkering and toying vrith. the mech-
anism so soon destined to revolutionize human inter-
course.
The word play found no place in Emile Ber-
liner's lexicon. His absorption in things scientific
was complete. It found constant expression in
letters to his kith and kin in Germany. Once a
brother in Hanover wrote sternly to admonish
118
COMPLETES TELEPHONE 119
Emile against pursuing the elusive shadow of tele-
phony at the expense of the tangible substance of
dry goods, which was affording him an honest
living!
Almost immediately after the realization of his
supreme ambition in associating himself with the
Bell interests in September, 1878, Berliner suffered
a breakdown. Xerves ordinarily taut now tired and
relaxed. Then came exhaustion, and, finally, col-
lapse. Berliner was just back from his conclusive
visit Avith the Bell group in Xew York when he
fainted in his lodgings at Washington. A weari-
some period of illness ensued.
He was now to pay the price of his long vigil
of strangeness and loneliness in a new land. He had
never kno^ii in America the caressing influence of
a home enviromnent, nor the stimulus that is born
of intimate relationshixDs "\\'ith confident friends. In
the Behrend store, surrounded by sordid indiffer-
ence toward the higher things which were engaging
his thought, the inventor was perforce compelled to
conceal his hopes, to suppress his dreams and gen-
erally to erase his real self in order that it might
fit into the workaday scheme within which bread-
and-butter requirements pinioned him. It was those
psychological conditions, as much as actual wear
and tear in a physical sense, that sentenced Emile
Berliner to an enforced period of inactivity and
correspondingly irksome sojourn in a sickbed.
Through the mndow of his room in Providence Hos-
120 EMILE BERLINER
pital he could glimpse the glittering white dome of
the Capitol, and he derived fresh hope and deter-
mination from that inspiring symbol of the land of
opportunity.
For six weeks he was a patient at Providence.
News of Berliner's contract mth the Bell interests
had spread through the scientific world at AVash-
ington and among Berliner's narrow circle of
friends. Among the first to congratulate him was
Mr. Solomons, the book dealer who, the year pre-
vious, had brought Berliner and his work to the at-
tention of Professor Joseph Henry, at the Smithson-
ian Institution. "It affords me sincere pleasure to
learn," wrote Mr. Solomons, ''that your merits as
an inventor have at last been recognized in a sub-
stantial manner, and I can assure you it will always
be gratifying to me to hear of your continued suc-
cess."
The daughters of the Solomons house, who are
to-day among the distinguished women of Washing-
ton, perpetuate the family friendship with Emile
Berliner, who looks upon their father as one of his
earliest benefactors.
From his new associates of the Bell Telephone
Company, words of encouragement were not lack-
ing, either. "I am very sorry to hear of your sick-
ness," wrote Gardiner G. Hubbard, from New York,
on October 1, 1878, "and trust it will not be of long
continuance."
Theodore N. Vail, General Manager of the Bell
COMPLETES TELEPHONE 121
Telephone Company, was one of Berliner's periodi-
cal \dsitors at Providence Hospital. That visible
evidence of the Bell Company's interest in their
new collaborator was as medicine and fresh air to
the prostrate inventor. Buoyant, optimistic, dy-
namic, Vail was an unfailing tonic. His bedside
calls, invariably marked by encouraging prophecies
of Berliner's future in the telephone field, acted like
electric energy poured into a run-do^Ti battery:
Vail's \'isits helped materially to fortify the patient
against the depressing dictum of physicians that
Berliner should not resume work for a whole year.
That advice had all the annihilating effect of a
prison sentence on the eager young scientist, now
longing more impatiently than ever to travel the
path of opportunity that at last was opened to him.
Since those formative days, forty-eight years
ago, Emile Berliner has had one or two other nerv-
ous breakdo^\^ls. Yet, past seventy-five, he contends
that his nerve structure is more rugged than at any
previous time in his life. "When asked how he over-
came his first collapse and by the same methods
triumphed over later ones, Berliner clenches his
fists, grits his teeth, snaps into a setting-up posture,
and says: "Just like this — by holding on! — and by
a fiiTu confidence that proper rest always effects
eventual cure. ' '
Berliner's theory, time-tried and experience-
tested, is that nervous breakdowns as such are
purely physiological. ' ' Under a continuous strain, ' '
122 EMILE BERLINEE
he explains, "the sheathing of the nerve fibers
becomes sore and more or less inflamed. In that con-
dition they affect the brain and give rise to morbid,
pessimistic and even suicidal thoughts. If one will
only be patient and give the system a chance to
pull itself together under more favorable conditions,
nerves will become as strong again as they were
before collapse."
The solicitude of Gardiner G. Hubbard and
Theodore N. Vail for the speedy recovery of Emile
Berliner was bom of something more than genu-
inely sympathetic and sincere interest in his health.
In the letter expressing hope that he would soon be
up and about, Hubbard had written: ''Mr. Watson's
view is that we should take immediate steps for
having your invention patented in Great Britain
and Canada, and I will prepare and forward the
necessary papers for you to sign in a day or two."
Unbeknown to Berliner himself, he had become
an almost indispensable factor in the Bell Telephone
Company's calculations. Indeed, what he had in-
vented, and that which the Bells acquired from
him — the control of Berliner's caveats and patent
applications, as well as the use of his induction coil
patent — seemed to be the rocks to which the whole
Bell enterprise was about to clifig for security and
for the realization of its uncharted future.
After Alexander Graham Bell had obtained the
patent for his telephone invention, he and Watson
continued to improve it, until they reached a point
COMPLETES TELEPHONE 123
at which they thought it could be sold to the West-
ern Union Telegraph Company. The Bell patent
rights were offered to the Western Union for one
hundred thousand dollars, which was **real money"
half a century ago. That already great corpora-
tion was the logical agency for turning the telephone
to practical purposes. But the management of the
Western Union (later headed by Theodore N. Vail)
was not so astute or far-seeing as its successors, and
it rejected the Bell-Watson proposition. It did not
want the Bell telephone — ^that is to say, it did not
covet the prize as yet.
Later, when the patent's immeasurable possibil-
ities were grasped, the Western Union of that day
simply decided to annex it more or less by main
force. Millions of capital and shrewd captains of
finance stood behind the company. It did not seri-
ously occur to the Western Union high command
that a little thing like Bell's patent — *'a mere scrap
of paper" — could impede the progress of the
colossus that now occupied, almost unchallenged,
the field of electrical communication. The Bell Com-
pany's position seemed all the more contemptible
and defenseless, from the standpoint of the Western
Union, in view of its financial weakness. "The
giant expected to crush the pigmy with a blow,"
records Albert Bigelow Paine in his biography of
Theodore N. Vail {In One Man's Life). "The pop-
ularity of the telephone grew amazingly," writes
Paine, "and the demand for instruments increased
124 EMILE BERLINER
^^— — »«-^'^^— **^— — ^— — ^— i— ^■^^■^^— ^■^— — — — i— ^— ^— ™— — — — —
beyond the limits of the Bell Company to manufac-
ture, and especially beyond its ability to purchase.
The company was constantly on the verge of bank-
ruptcy, through its prosperity."
But in addition to its slender capital resources,
the Bell Company seemed vulnerable, in the West-
em Union's eyes, because of the technical impres-
sion the Bell telephone itself made. It was very
remote from perfection. One still required to shout
into it, and often to repeat the shouts several times,
to be heard or miderstood. The magneto transmitter
in particular was so primitive — ^more designed, as
Watson himself admitted on a later occasion, "to
develop the American voice and lungs than to pro-
mote conversation." The thing seemed indeed so
utterly crude that the Western Union persuaded it-
self it would not have to face a serious competitor
for some time to come. So for its technical pur-
pose, the company leagued three of the best-known
electrical inventors of the day — Thomas A. Edison,
Elisha Gray and Amos E. Dolbear — and, under the
name of the American Speaking Telephone Com-
pany, proceeded to drive at full speed into the field
of telephony. With a bluster destined to cost it
dearly a few years later, the company proclaimed
that it possessed "the only original telephone,"
flouting Bell's rights as if they had never existed.
"The fact that all three of its inventors, Edison,
Gray and Dolbear, had each and severally fully ac-
knowledged Bell's rights apparently was little re-
COMPLETES TELEPHONE 125
garded, especially as Gray and Dolbear were now
quite willing to repudiate such acknowledgments
and assert prior claims."*
By a singular coincidence, Edison's patent ap-
plication for a flat disk transmitter was filed at the
United States Patent Office in Washington just thir-
teen days after Berliner deposited there his caveat
for the microphone. Mr. Edison for some years had
maintained his own well-equipped laboratories and
was now fully prepared to aid and abet the Western
Union in its raid for priority. It should be observed,
in passing, that the Western Union Telegraph Com-
pany of 1926 is a wholly different enterprise, in
respect of policy, personnel and management, from
the organization which so adventurously embarked
upon the uncharted sea of telephony in 1879.
* 'Lessees of Bell telephones," writes Herbert N.
Casson {History of the Telephone), ** clamored with
one voice for a transmitter as good as Edison's.
This, of course, could not be had in a moment, and
the five months that followed were the darkest days
in the childhood of the telephone. How to compete
with the Western Union, which had this superior
transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires,
forty million dollars of capital, and a first claim
upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and rights
of way — that was the immediate problem that con-
fronted Theodore N. Vail, the Bell's new general
*ln One Man's Life, page 102.
126 EMILE BERLINER
manager. Several of his captains deserted, and he
was compelled to take control of their unprofitable
exchanges. There was scarcely a mail that did not
bring him some bulletin of discouragement or de-
feat."
But the *'Big Four" now in charge of Bell for-
tunes— Bell himself, Watson, Hubbard and Vail —
had no notion of giving up the ship. On the contrary,
the Liliputians determined to strike the Western
Union a blow that would go straight to the vitals of
the onrushing Gulliver. To that end they put a dis-
cerning finger on the pulse of their distressful situa-
tion— ^they must secure a transmitter that would
outclass the lampblack transmitter developed by
Edison, which was now in so serious danger of mak-
ing the Western Union's telephone apparatus more
popular than Bell's mechanism. The public, it was
realized, cared nothing about patent rights. What
it wanted was telephone service. It was ready to
subscribe for the most efficient instruments it could
get, no matter whence they came.
It was in the midst of this threatened submerg-
ence by the Western Union avalanche that Emile
Berliner came within the Bell Telephone Company's
orbit with a.11 the providential effectiveness of a life-
saver. Then and thus it was that Watson, at Vail's
instigation, had sought out Berliner in Washington,
consequential upon the initial interview with Pollok,
the patent lawyer; had inspected the inventor's
little soap-box microphone and spoken those
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COMPLETES TELEPHONE 127
words — ^prophetic for Berliner and, as time was to
show, of literally vital importance to the Bells:
^^ Young man, ive will want thats You will hear from
us in a few days. ' '
Six weeks elapsed between the consummation of
Berliner's agreement with the Bell interests, fol-
lowed by his breakdown in Washington, and the
commencement of his service under the employment
contract. In November, 1878, against the urgent
advice of his physician, he proceeded to New York
for that purpose. The Bell Telephone Company's
headquarters at 66 and 68 Eeade Street occupied
only half of a second floor. The equipment was of
Spartan simplicity, consisting all told of two or
three plain deal desks and chairs — the forerunner of
the marble pile that is now at 195 Broadway.
In that modest environment — the cradle of the
mighty **Bell System" of this day — Theodore N.
Vail was organizing the affairs of the company with
steam-engine zeal. He had only one assistant — a
certain R. W. Devonshire — who sent out in longhand
all of the correspondence. Typewriters had not yet
emerged. Emile Berliner's accomplishments, dat-
ing from schooldays in Hanover, included uncom-
mon skill in Spencerian penmanship, of which, at
seventy-five, he is still a master, so Vail, for the time
being, commandeered his services as a general util-
ity man in the Bell offices.
It was about this time that Francis Blake, of
Boston, a scientist formerly attached to the United
128 EMILE BERLINER
States Geodetic Survey at Washington, designed an
ingenious modification of the Berliner loose contact
microphone. He had been working on it at the Will-
iams electrical shop in Boston in an effort to put it
into practical condition, and eventually sold it to the
Bell Company. Figuring out microphonic action
was a deep and intricate problem — one that took
about all the strength and ingenuity a man pos-
sessed, for it was at this stage of his experiments
that Francis Blake, like Berliner a little while
before, was prostrated by a nervous breakdown,
with his work unfinished.
The value of the Blake transmitter modification
lay in an ingenious suspension, on two flat springs,
of a hard carbon button and a bead of platinum in
such a way that the two would not easily separate
when vibrated by the diaphragm against which they
leaned. When carefully adjusted and addressed by
a trained speaker the Blake transmitter would work
very well. But it took practise to talk into it, and,
if adjusted in the evening, it might be entirely out of
adjustment the next morning. Of course, such an
instrument was entirely unfit to be placed in com-
mission. It was at this precise period that Ber-
liner's important and practical work for the Bell
Company commenced.
As the days sped by and the Western Union chal-
lenge remained unmet, the Bell agents became more
and more insistent upon securing a good battery
transmitter because whenever the Western Union
COMPLETES TELEPHONE 129
Company came to prospective subscribers for tele-
phone service with lampblack transmitters, these
proved superior to the Bell magneto transmitter.
The situation, already acute, now threatened to be-
come critical. At the end of January, 1879, Vail
and Watson decided to send Berliner to Boston,
to take up his experimental duties at the company 's
laboratory in the Williams shop and finish Blake's
work while the latter was sick abed. In the incred-
ibly brief period of six weeks Berliner perfected
the Blake transmitter, so that two hundred instru-
ments could be made in a day, and, once adjusted,
would remain so indefinitely.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Com-
pany of this day retains in its archives an account
written by Emile Berliner narrating in detail what
had to be done in order to save the ingenious Blake
form of transmitter from being a pronounced fail-
ure. The account is of so historic importance in the
development of telephony, and of so absorbing inter-
est to all students of electrical apparatus, who
nowadays include ''radio fans," that it has been
deemed worth}'' of reproduction as an appendix to
this volume. (See page 314.) It shows what keen
and exact reasoning a successful inventor must
apply in order to accomplish his purposes. Inciden-
tally, it visualizes the condition into which the bud-
ding art of telephony had fallen.
''The status of the Blake transmitter, when I
took hold of it," wrote Emile Berliner, "was, briefly,
130 EMILE BEBLINER
that it was not possible to make twelve transmitters
alike good, and when these were adjusted at night,
they were out of adjustment the next morning."
Berliner's plodding efforts eventually detected the
flaws in the Blake mechanism. As soon as Berliner
reported that it had been perfected, orders were
given that two hundred a day should be made. Ber-
liner himself, with his assistant, Eichards, tested
each of them minutely. Once adjusted, they re-
mained in first-class working order. Berliner per-
sonally inspected and tested the first twenty thou-
sand transmitters for the Bell Company. Then that
branch of the business was turned over to Richards.
Thereafter the inventor devoted himself to research
work for the Bell Company and assisted Professor
Charles E-. Cross, of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, in the exhaustive experiments which
the latter conducted for James J. Storrow in support
of that patent lawyer's astute defense of the Bell-
Berliner patents and of his unceasing attack upon
infringers.
The Blake transmitter as perfected by Berliner
was vastly superior to the Edison lampblack trans-
mitter, which was being put out by the rival tele-
phone concern, the Gold and Stock Telegraph Com-
pany, for use of subscribers. This was a subsidiary
of the Western Union, specially organized and oper-
ated for the benefit of stock-brokerage houses which
had their own telegraph operators. Momentous
events in the telephone world were now brewing.
COMPLETES TELEPHONE 131
They were to demonstrate that Berliner's work
saved the day for the Bell Company, though not un-
til after the contenders for supremacy in the tele-
phone field had fought a long and costly duel in the
arena of the highest courts of the republic.
Nearly all of us whose memory runs back to the
earliest telephones in general use will recall that
Berliner 's name appeared prominently on the Blake
transmitter affixed to the wooden box telephones of
that ancient era. The author remembers vividly
the first telephones installed in his native La
Porte, Indiana, that "Maple City" which nestles so
picturesquely in the northwestern Hoosier county
lapped by the waters of Lake Michigan. He recalls
the invincible skepticism of an eighty-year-old
La Porte grandmother, who had never learned
to speak English. A grandson, of whom she was
especially fond, had learned German to please her.
Because he was attorney for the local Bell Company,
some of the first instruments installed in La Porte
were placed in his office and her home. The
young lawyer's opening conversation was held with
his grandmother in her language. The astonished
and somewhat affrighted octogenarian remarked
later in the day, after recovering her equilibrium,
that she didn't think it a particularly wonder-
ful thing that Amerikaner should have invented
something enabling English to be talked by wire.
But that they had discovered a device whereby
German could be spoken by telephone — tJiat, the
132 EMILE BERLINER
old lady insisted, was positively the last word in the
way of a scientific marvel — Kolosjsall
The author, many years afterward long sta-
tioned in Berlin as a newspaper correspondent, sel-
dom said Wer dortf (Who's there? — the German
equivalent for Hello) over the Kaiser's telephone
lines without recalling with a smile the La Porte
grandmother's quaint tribute to what Bell and Ber-
liner between them had wrought,
CHAPTER XIV
THE TELEPHONE FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE
BEELINER'S completion of the telephone placed
the Bell Company in an extremely strong posi-
tion not only by virtue of Bell's own broad patents,
but also because the company now possessed incom-
parably the best instruments of the day. But as
triumph is ever the mother of contention, the Bells
speedily found themselves ambushed on all sides.
They were on the threshold of attack, intrigue and
rivalry that were to eventuate in lawsuits literally
by the hundred, and to cost them in defensive mea-
sures more than a million of money and more than
a decade of precious time. Before their herculean
struggle for self-preservation was to end, they were
to combat none other than the government of the
United States of America itself.
The Bell telephone, of w^hich the Berliner trans-
mitter had now become a vitally integral part, was,
in short, face to face with a fight for its life. No
stone of recourse or of resource available to capital,
legal acumen or human unscrupulousness Avas to be
left unturned, to accomplish the ruin, first, of Bell,
the inventor, and, then, of Berliner, the perfecter of
the telephone.
133
134 EMILE BERLINER
The illimitable commercial possibilities of the
new art were no longer in doubt. To "get rich
quick" out of them, by hook or by crook, became the
obsessing passion alike of recognized captains of in-
dustry and of piratical adventurers.
Telephony accordingly ushered in one of those
*' booms" which, in recurring cycles, fever the imagi-
nations of the American people. Once it was gold
that set men crazy ; then, silver ; in a more modern
time, oil; latterly, Florida land. In the early
'eighties it was telephony. All over the country
men were suddenly fired with the notion that Bell
and Berliner had opened up a field that could be
fabulously exploited by any one with a smattering
of mechanical ingenuity and the enterprise to launch
a wildcat stock- jobbing campaign.
To the more ruthless, the new field even held out
the inviting possibihties of successful blackmail. In
one form or another, the Bell group soon found it-
self called upon to baffle a long conspiracy of malice,
envy and greed mthout parallel in business and
legal history, measured in terms of the rich prize
at stake and the duration of the contest. No fewer
than six hundred defensive lawsuits were fought
up to May 10, 1897, when the United States Supreme
Court finally placed its historic hallmark, for all
time, upon the validity of the Bell-Berliner patents
and pronounced them unassailable.
Athwart the Bell's path lay primarily the West-
em Union Telegraph Company. Through its sub-
FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE 135
sidiary, the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company,
the Western Union had boldly invaded the telephone
field. It commanded eminent engineering talent —
Edison, Gray and Dolbear; o\\Tied a far-flung net-
work of wires (all overhead in those days), and was
ready to link the whole comitry into a sj^stem of
telephone ** central" stations and subscribers. Its
next objective was to crush the only serious com-
petitor in sight, the Bell Telephone Company. As
an ally in that campaign, the Western Union found
ready to hand the budding "granger movement" in
the rural West, with its insensate hatred and fear
of anything savoring of a *' monopoly." So the
Western Union interests of that day moved Heaven
and earth to turn the anti-monopoly guns to its own
uses and against the Bell Telephone Company. Con-
gress and the press were ruthlessly exploited for
the purpose.
The Western Union first trotted out Elisha Gray
as the Simon-pure inventor of the telephone and
forthwith began infringement proceedings against
the Bell Company. The palpable pui^ose was to
terrify the Bell group into a tame submission. The
case began in the fall of 1878 and ended dramati-
cally a year later on the advice of George Gifford,
the Western Union 's chief counsel, who notified his
clients, point-blank, that Alexander Graham Bell
was the unchallengeable inventor of the telephone.
He advised them to sue for peace on the best terms
the Bells would grant.
136 EMILR BERLINER
Months of conference finally resulted in a give-
and-take arrangement. The Western Union agreed,
under a covenant to run for seventeen years:
(1) To acknowledge Bell as the original inventor
of the telephone.
(2) To concede that his patents were unassail-
able.
(3) To quit the telephone field.
On their part, the Bells agreed:
(1) To purchase the Western Union telephone
system,
(2) To grant the Western Union twenty per cent,
royalty on all rentals of telephones.
(3) To stay out of the telegraph field.
The Western Union having met its Waterloo, the
Bell system came definitely and formally into its
own as the standard, recognized and indisputable
telephone organization of the country. Its stock
sky-rocketed to one thousand dollars a share. Theo-
dore N. Vail, the generalissimo of the whole trium-
phant crusade, reorganized the company, and in
1882, within three years of the victory over the
Western Union, Bell Telephone gross earnings ex-
ceeded one million dollars. But the company's
trials, especially its legal tribulations, were far
from over. Once again Elisha Gray thrust himself
into the picture. Not content to accept the defeat
administered to the Western Union in 1879, he re-
asserted his claim to be the original inventor of the
telephone.
FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE 137
The paths of Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha
Gray had been running close together and in almost
parallel lines for nearly ten years. In 1874 they
were both engaged in a contest to invent the first
harmonic telegraph. Gray held to that as his ob-
jective. But Bell turned to telephony. Yet each had
always at the back of his head the notion of
sending speech by wire. Thereupon ensued, as one
of the freaks of Patent Office history, an amazing
coincidence, Bell and Gray, utterly unbekno^vn to
each other, selected the same day, on which to file,
respectively, an application for a patent and a
caveat on the identical subject. It was St. Valen-
tine's Day — a stormy Monday, the fourteenth of
February, 1876. Bell reached the Patent Office first,
according to the book of record, in which as ''Cash
Entry No. 5" stood the legend: *'A. G. Bell, $15."
Entry No. 39 read: '^E. Gray, $10."
There was thus not only the documentary record
of Bell's chronological priority, but an even more
vital difference in the fact that Bell filed an applica-
tion for a patent, while Gray had submitted only a
caveat. When a man files an application for a
patent, he declares that he has completed the inven-
tion. Gray's lawsuits were all unsuccessful. He
was rebuffed at every turn.
Following Gray, as challenger of the Bell pat-
ents, came Professor Amos E. Dolbear, of Tufts
College. Dolbear contended that he had ''im-
proved" the telephonic device originated by the
138 EMILE BERLINER
German, Philip Reis, of Frankfort, in 1861. But
Dolbear's claims, like Elislia Gray's, were not up-
held. The famous court decision which rejected
them observed: "To follow Reis is to fail; but to
follow Bell is to succeed." It was testified during
the suit that Dolbear's telephone ''would squeak, but
not speak."
Even with the scalps of the Western Union, Gray
and Dolbear dangling at its belt, the Bell Telephone
Company was to have no immunity from attack.
Telephony was making fortunes overnight forty
years ago, as oil and Florida land have created
milUonaires in our day. That was why the Bells
were to know no peace at the hands of financial ad-
venturers, shyster lawyers and fake inventors.
There now bounded into the arena of coveted
booty one Daniel Drawbaugh, resident of a Penn-
sylvania country town, whose yokel origin at first
aroused only the contempt of the Bell lawyers. But
Drawbaugh persisted with his claim to have invented
and used a telephone several years prior to its inven-
tion by Alexander Graham Bell. Dangling before
their eyes the prospects of millions in tribute to be
extorted from the Bell Company if he could establish
his pretensions, Drawbaugh induced a group of
Washington bankers to form the ''People's Tele-
phone Company." He persuaded these credulous
angels to finance, at vast cost to themselves, litiga-
tion that dragged through several years. But once
again the colors of the Bell System emerged vie-
FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE 139
torious. Drawbaugli turned out to be a village
tinker, with a weird mania for patterning the latest
kink in mechanics and grandiloquently claiming the
result as an earlier creation of his own. The de-
cision throwing Drawbaugh's case out of court
censured him for '* deliberately falsifying the
facts."
The Bell group now wore an obviously indisput-
able championship belt in the field of telephony, but
challengers continued to bob up as the years rolled
by and as the success of the Bell System was aug-
mented. The Drawbaugh debacle was followed by
a sally ventured by the *' Overland Company,"
which strung wires and sold stock on the strength
of them. The Overland attack was sufficiently per-
sistent to depress the stock of the Bell Telephone
Company and to carry its patent suit to the United
States Supreme Court, finally to be dismissed in
that tribunal.
CHAPTER XV
THE UNITED STATES VS. EMILE BERLINER
IT SHOULD not be supposed that during all these
thrilling years of strife, development and tri-
umph in telephony Emile Berliner's microphone
patent application was having smooth sailing. It
was, in fact, perpetually entangled in a serious ''in-
terference" at the United States Patent Office.
Its legitimacy was constantly challenged, and its is-
suance correspondingly blocked by rival inventors
backed by the strong corporations anxious to enter
the telephone field or to develop sufficient ''nuisance
value" to be bought up at profit to themselves by
the Bell Company. Fourteen years of these obstruc-
tive tactics ensued, despite incessant efforts upon
the part of the owners of Berliner's rights, the Bell
Telephone Company, to checkmate them.
In consequence of all this, it was not until No-
vember 17, 1891, that the Patent Office issued to
Emile Berliner Patent No. 463,569 in response to
the application filed by him on June 4, 1877. The
news of the Patent Office 's action was a sensation in
the financial and telephone world when conspicu-
ously published in the newspapers of November 18,
1891,
140
UNITED STATES VS. BERLINER 141
Bell Telephone — The Berliner Patent Sends
The Stock To 213
ran the head-line in the Boston Globe. ''The Ber-
liner patent," the Globe's financial article said,
''issued yesterday morning from the Patent Office
at Washington is, next to the original Bell patent,
the most important patent in the telephone field ever
issued. It covers every known form of battery
transmitter, the mechanical device behind the
mouthpiece of the ordinary 'long-distance' trans-
mitter. The announcement that the Berliner patent
was issued sent Bell Telephone stock flying, and
from 198, yesterday's latest sale, the price shot up,
reaching 213 as top notch. . . . We think it safe to
say, though we do not knotv that any of the Bell
Telephone directors, or officials ivill agree tvith the
statement, that this Berliner patent is of more com-
mercial value tlian the original Bell TelepJione
patent J ^
In a Washington despatch dated November 18,
1891, the day following the issuance of Berliner's
patent, the Chicago Inter-Ocean said :
*'A curious computation was made by experts
about the Patent Office to-day as to the value of the
Berliner patent to the Bell Company. The capital
stock of that company being $15,000,000 and the
maximum rise in the stock 30 points, it follows that
the value of the Berliner microphone patent, as de-
termined by stock quotations, is $5,000,000. On this
basis, by computation, the patent added one-third
142 EMILE BERLINER
to the value of the Bell Telephone Company's capi-
tal stock."
It was immediately realized by all concerned that
the issuance of the Berliner microphone patent
meant the continuance for seventeen more years
(namely, until November 17, 1908) of the Bell Tele-
phone monopoly, which up to that time had been
maintained solely by the Bell, Edison and Blake
patents. The public was astonished to learn that a
patent had now been issued to the Bell Company,
covering in the broadest possible terms the identical
microphone transmitter for which telephone sub-
scribers had been paying rentals for thirteen years,
under which new patent the company would be en-
titled to exact a continuance of the same rentals for
the same instrument for seventeen years longer.
This consummation, which was of priceless value
to the Bell interests, caused a furore in the country.
It found vociferous expression in an indignant
press. The Bell Company was now accused of hav-
ing deliberately and illegitimately contrived to keep
Berliner's microphone patent, applied for June 4,
1877, pending in the Patent Office since its acquire-
ment from the patentee in 1878.
Encouraged by the public agitation thus en-
gendered, and fomented by a group of ambitious
pohticians, mostly of southern origin, the Pan-Elec-
tric Company was organized with a capital of five
million dollars for the ostensible purpose of sub-
stantiating the so-called ''modification patents"
UNITED STATES VS. BERLINER 143
issued to one Rogers. With these as their basis, the
men behind the Pan-Electric Company, on the eve
of the second Cleveland administration in 1893, in-
duced the Federal Government to bring suit for the
annulment of the Bell-Berliner patents on the
ground that they had been obtained by fraud.
General Joseph E. Johnston, the distinguished
Confederate officer, and hero of Manassas, was
president of the Pan-Electric. A former United
States Senator, Augustus H. Garland, of Arkansas,
who had been attornej^-general of the United States
in the first Cleveland Cabinet a few years previous,
was the company's counsel. United States Senator
Isham G. Harris, of Tennessee, was one of its direc-
tors. Johnston, Garland and Harris were public
men of spotless integrity. Their identification with
the new crusade against the Bell Telephone Com-
pany sufficed to give the Pan-Electric case a serious
status.
"United States of America v. American Bell
Telephone Company and Emile Berliner" there-
upon became the title of a bill in equity filed in the
Circuit Court of the United States in and for the
District of Massachusetts on February 1, 1893. It
prayed a decree to set aside and cancel the Berliner
microphone patent issued on November 17, 1891, and
now the property of the Bell Company as assignee
of Berliner.
The first round in these proceedings was lost by
the Bell Company — its maiden defeat in its long and
144 EMILE BERLINEE
fierce cycle of litigation. On January 3, 1895, the
Circuit Court at Boston entered the decree prayed
for by the Government. But the Bells still had on
their fighting togs, and, battle-scarred as they were,
they waded afresh into the legal fray, this time dog-
gedly to defend the ingenious invention of Emile
Berliner. On their appeal to the Court of Appeals
the decree in favor of the Government was reversed
on May 18, 1895, and a decree entered, directing a
dismissal of the Government's bill. Thereupon the
Government, no less determined to mn, took an ap-
peal to the United States Supreme Court. A motion
was made by the Bells to dismiss the appeal for
want of jurisdiction. But this was denied, where-
upon the case proceeded to argument upon its
merits.
The background for the litigation had been more
than three years in the making. The sort of popular
virulence in which the vendetta against Berliner's
invention was first conceived is typified by the fol-
lowing editorial published in the Rochester (N. Y.)
Herald of December 4, 1891, a fortnight after the
sensational issue of the Berliner patent at "Wash-
ington :
**For a long time prior to November 17th the
stock of the Bell Telephone Company stood at or
near $180. For about a week preceding that date, it
advanced some three or four dollars. On the Friday
before, there were sales at $193 ; Monday it had gone
up to $198, and on the day the Berliner patent was
issued, the stock reached $210.
UNITED STATES VS. BERLINER 145
''These quotations show that people inside the
Bell combination knew what was going on at the
Patent OflSce, confirming opinion long held by many
that the Bell Company had altogether too confiden-
tial relations with that office. The Boston Journal
says: 'The patent virtually secures that Company
for another seventeen years in the control of its
present enormous business.' The Boston Herald
says: 'It is claimed that the patent covers every
known form of battery transmitter.'
"It will be seen from these statements by the
papers of Boston, which is the home of the Bell
Company, that the monopoly expects to retain its
grip upon this country for seventeen years longer.
It has sought to accomplish this result hy the dis-
Jionorahle trick of keeping up a sham contest in the
Patent Office over the Berliner application through
the past fourteen years. That such proceedings are
possible in a bureau of the national government is a
fact discreditable to the officials of that bureau dur-
ing the period named and an outrage on the people
of the United States. The time has come for a com-
plete revolution in that office and a change in the
laws bearing upon this question.
"But it is possible, we might say probable, that
the Bell Company will reach its Waterloo in the
great battle that \\i\\ be fought in the courts over
this very Berliner patent. Bell's original patent
expires with the term of the English patent in
1892. . . . The public will follow the further devel-
opment of this matter with interest. If, in the face
of all the evidence against the validity of the Ber-
liner claim to originality, the United States courts
should again decide in favor of this powerful
monopoly, these courts must expect to suffer in the
esteem of the enlightened public even more than
they have as a residt of the litigation already had on
this question. But the public, in any event, should
insist upon such a change in the patent system as
146 EMILE BERLINER
will make the scandalous history of the Berliner
clai^n in the Patent Office hereafter impossible."
In bringing suit for nullification of the Berliner
patent, the Attorney General of the United States
(then William H. H. Miller) virtually identified him-
self with the innuendoes in popular circulation and
which are characterized by the newspaper article
above quoted. James J. Storrow, of Boston, the
learned chief counsel engaged to defend Berliner's
rights, in the course of the brief he filed in the Su-
preme Court, thus stigmatized the action of the
Federal law authorities :
"Naturally, accusations of fraud, made over the
signature of the head of the Department of Justice,
are of themselves a grievous injury to the persons
charged. For the public assumes that such accusa-
tions will not be made until the subject has been ex-
haustively examined, and in a fairly impartial
manner; and they ought not to be made until then.
This is especially so when the attempt is made to
throw the heavy hand of the government upon the
side of what is really a contest between patentee and
infringers. This suit, hotvever, appears on the com-
plainant's own papers, to be in large part, at least,
an ill-considered and unjustifiable assault.'*
In such an atmosphere began the epic of Emile
Berliner's fight for vindication of his inventive
rights in the republic's court of last resort. It
had been preceded, as has been shown, by years of
furious legal strife. '* Interwoven in the story of
the golden growth of the telephone," wrote John
UNITED STATES VS. BERLINER 147
Paul Bocock in ''The Romance of the Telephone"
(Munsey's Magazine, November, 1900), ''are so
marvelous oaths, such charges of corruption and
treachery, such tales of ruin and oppression, such
accusations against men high in the public esteem,
such sacrifices of truth and honor, such disappoint-
ments and defeats of the many who have sought to
share the reward of the one, that the bare relation
of them all, were that possible, would surpass any
romance ever written."
CHAPTER XVI
THE VINDICATION OF EMILE BERLINER
EMILE BERLINER was now to become the tar-
get of a fusillade of slings and arrows, as
outrageous as any of the fortunes already suffered
by the telephone pioneers. The Government 's bill in
equity bluntly sought to rob him of the fruits of his
genius by branding him a fraud. It asked the
Supreme Court to adjudge that the Berliner patent
of November 17, 1891, was ^'nuU and void"; that it
was "wrongfully procured to be issued by means of
fraud, false suggestion, concealment and imposition
on the part of the Bell Telephone Company and
Emile Berliner"; that there was "nothing in said
patent which contained or disclosed, or in any man-
ner set forth," by reason of which there could be
secured to the defendants "any monopoly of any
patentable invention or discovery whatever"; and
that all persons interested under that patent "ought
to have known, and did know" that the patent was
void.
On the strength of this scathing indictment, the
Government's bill prayed that the Berliner patent
should be cancelled and that the Government "and
148
VINDICATION OF BERLINER 149
all the people of the United States be in all things
restored and reinstated, as nearly as may be, to the
actual condition and state existing prior to the
issue" of the patent. If the Supreme Court found
that the Berliner patent was not wholly void, the
Government asked that it **be treated as a contract,
and be reformed, limited and modified, as in equity
and good conscience it ought to be." The Govern-
ment's bill pointed out that Emile Berliner sold the
invention to the Bell Company before October 23,
1878, and that the Bell Company was now its sole
o^vner. But the bill made Berliner a defendant, in
order that he might appear and be heard, if he
desired.
The '* grounds" offered by the Government in its
petition for annulment of the Berliner patent were
five in number, to-wit :
1. That Berliner never made the invention.
2. That he was not the first inventor of it.
3. An alleged defect, in the patent itself, i.e.,
that the described apparatus was not operative.
4. The long pendency of the application, i.e.,
abandonment in the Patent Office by nonprosecution,
and alleged defects in the proceedings.
5. That Berliner's invention was exliausted
under the doctrine of Miller v. Eagle Manufacturing
Company, 151 U. S. 186.
The Government 's proofs in chief began July 10,
1893, and were finished January 3, 1894. They con-
sisted of the deposition of Professor George F.
150 EMILE BERLINER
Barker, expert; of a large amount of documentary
evidence, chiefly the Berliner file, and other files and
papers from the Patent Office ; and an offer of other
oral proof which resulted in an agreed statement of
certain facts.
The Bell-Berliner proofs in defense began Oc-
tober 21, 1893, and closed February 15, 1894. They
consisted of the depositions of Professor Charles R.
Cross, expert, with tests of Berliner telephones in
presence of the complainant Government's experts;
of Emile Berliner, the inventor ; of John E. Hudson,
president of the American Bell Telephone Company,
and of a variety of other witnesses, including an
imposing array of examiners from the Patent Office.
The defendants also called Messrs. A. S. Solomons,
Simon and Gustave Oppenheimer and Alvan S.
Richards, of Washington, personal friends who had
intimate knowledge of the history of Berliner's ex-
periments and invention, and Mr. Coombs, the patent
solicitor's assistant who drew the original Berliner
specification.
The Government's opening before the Supreme
Court consisted, on most points, of the barest prima
facie case. Then the defendants went into the case
at large, and proved an extensive volume of vitally
material facts. The Government in rebuttal at-
tacked only one of those facts — the operativeness of
the instrument. Counsel for Berliner contended,
therefore, that it had a right to assume that the
testimony developed on his behalf on all other points
VINDICATION OF BERLINER 151
could not be disputed. The Government's rebuttal
testimony that the Berliner instruments ivould not
talk was overthrown, on cross-examinatioyi, hy talk-
ing with them from Philadelphia to New York — an
impressive achievement in those days.
On May 10, 1897, almost exactly six months after
the conclusion of the final arguments in the case,
the decision of the United States Supreme Court
was handed down by Mr. Justice Brewer. It con-
stituted an unqualified victorj^ for Emile Berliner.
It completely rejected and demolished the Govern-
ment's principal contention — that there had been
** extraordinary delay" in the United States Patent
Office in the issuance of the Berliner patent, due to
corrupt connivance. It left the allegation of fraud
without a leg, or even a toe, to stand on. There are
few cases of Supreme Court record, in which the
United States figures as a litigant, that contain a
more crushing denunciation of the Government's
cause.
Having pointed out that ''the delay in the Patent
Office is the great fact in the case; determined the
bringing of the suit; stands in the forefront of the
bill; was the principal question argued in both
courts below, and occupies the chief space in the de-
cisions rendered," Mr. Justice Brewer disposed of
''this burden of the Government's case" in the fol-
lo\\dng annihilating terms :
"The Government's contention amounts only to
this, viz., that the defendant company was not active
152 EMILE BERLINER
but passive. If millions were to be added to its
profit by active effort it would have been impor-
tunate and have secured this patent long before it
did. As millions came to it by reason of its being
passive, it ought not to suffer for its omission to be
importunate. It must keep coming before the Com-
missioner, like the widow before the unjust judge in
the parable, until it compels the declaration, though
I fear not God nor regard man, yet, because this
widow trouhleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her
continual coming she weary me.*
**But is this the rule to measure the conduct of
those who apply for official action? What is the
amount of the importunity which will afford protec-
tion to the grant finally obtained? How frequent
must the demand be? It is easy to say that the
applications of this defendant, coming only at the
interval of months and years, were, taken with the
replies of the Patent Offices, mere 'perfunctory ex-
changes of compliments,' but this docs not change
the fact that action ivas ashed and repeatedly ashed;
that no request was made for delay, no intimation
that it was desired or ivould be acceptable/*
Dealing then with the general charge of fraud
preferred against Bell and Berliner, Mr. Justice
Brewer's opinion was of even more destructive de-
cisiveness. He said:
'^The difficidty ivith this charge of tvrong is that
it is not proved. It assumes the existence of a
knowledge which no one had ; of an intention which
is not shown. It treats every written communica-
tion from the solicitor in charge of the application,
calling for action, as a pretense, and all the oral and
urgent appeals for promptness as in fact mere in-
vitations to delay. It not only rejects the testimony
which is given, both oral and written, as false, but
asks that it be held to prove just the reverse.
VINDICATION OF BERLINER 153
''Indeed, the case which the counsel present to
us may be summed up in these words: 'The applica-
tion for this patent was duly filed. The Patent Office
after the filing had full jurisdiction over the pro-
cedure ; the applicant had no control over its action.
We have been unable to offer a syllable of testimony
tending to show that the applicant ever in any way
corrupted or attempted to corrupt any of the officials
of the department. We have been unable to show
that any delay or postponement w^as made at the
instance or on the suggestion of the applicant.
Every communication that it made during those
years carried with it a request for action; yet be-
cause the delay has resulted in enlarged profits to
the applicant, and the fact that it would so result
ought to have been known to it, it must be assumed
that in some way it did cause the delay, and having
so caused the delay ought to suffer therefor. '
*' There is seldom presented a case in which there
is such an absolute and total failure of proof of
wrong J'
In his ' ' syllabus ' ' of the proceedings Mr. Justice
Brewer added:
"The evidence in this case does not in the least
degree tend to show any corruption by the applicant
of any of the officials of the department, or any un-
due or improper influence exerted or attempted to
be exerted by it upon them, and on the other hand
does affirmatively show that it urged promptness on
the part of the officials of the department, and that
the delay was the result of the action of those
officials. ' '
The Supreme Court's opinion finally set forth
that the Government's "question, as stated, is not
open for consideration in this case. We see no error
154 EMILE BERLINER
in the decision of the Court of Appeals, and its de-
cree, dismissing the [Government's] bill is af-
firmed." The decision was all but unanimous. Of
the members of the Supreme Court who took part in
it, only one (Mr. Justice Harlan) dissented. It was
by a vote of six to one that Emile Berliner 's rights
were vindicated in the tribunal of last resort.
Thus came to a triumi)hant end the most impor-
tant and most protracted litigation which has arisen
under the patent system in this country. For years
it was pending in the trial courts and subsequently
was brought to the United States Supreme Court.
So vast was this litigation, so immense the volume
of testimony, and so far-reaching the rights in-
volved, that it is the only case in the history of the
Supreme Court to which an entire volume of its re-
ports is devoted. The culminating decision fixed for
all time the meritorious place of Emile Berliner as
a master-builder in the realm of telephony.*
*A great deal of feeling was created against the Bell Telephone
Company by the issue of the Berliner microphone patent. The delay
of fourteen years in the issue of the patent was attributed to some
"adroit handling" of the Berliner application by the Bell Tele-
phone lawyers. True, the Supreme Court in 1896 absolved the Bell
Company of any intentional delaying of the issue of the patent.
Yet public opinion was so aroused that in 1903 a Court of Appeals
narrowed the Berliner patent to the use of metallic contacts, but
otherwise sustained the patent. In the face of that restriction, two
presidents of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company,
Theodore N. Vail, in 1918, and H. B. Thayer, in 1924, emphatic;illy
upheld Berliner as the inventor of the microphone. A metal micro-
phone transmits talk perfectly; its range of adjustment alone is
smallei.
CHAPTER XVII
BEELINEK TAKES THE TRANSMITTER TO EUROPE
CHRONOLOGICALLY this narrative of the
Hanover emigrant boy who, scientifically un-
tutored, became the inventor of the microphone, was
interrupted to make place for the drama of the tele-
phone litigation. The story of Emile Berliner is
now taken up where it was left off — at the beginning
of his employment with the Bell Telephone Com-
pany as perfecter of the Blake transmitter.
A humble, unrecognized and merely hopeful dry-
goods store clerk in Washington only a year before,
Berliner now, in the middle of 1879, was an impor-
tant factor in the neAV industry of telephony, just
staggering into its illimitable own. The first twenty
thousand transmitters turned out by the Williams
factory in Boston were in use in various parts of the
country after passing muster at Berliner's own
hands. They were known as ''Blake-Berliner Trans-
mitters." In a veiy literal sense, it was Berliner
under whose auspices the telephone business STvning
into its practical stride.
Only once thereafter did it ever become neces-
sary for Berliner again to apply himself to the
155
156 EMILE BERLINER
Blake transmitter, which he had successfully
launched. During Berliner's absence on protracted
leave, the instrument department was placed under
the supervision of another man who was considered
an able mechanician. But Berliner had no sooner
returned to Boston than he was told that serious
complaints were coming in from the Telephone
Company's agents regarding the quality of the
Blake transmitters. Theodore N. Vail, General
Manager of the Company, directed Berliner to de-
vote himself without delay to ascertaining where the
difficulty lay and removing it.
After several weeks of plodding, Berliner, with
intuitive grasp, put his finger on the trouble. He
found that the substitute man who had functioned
in the instrument department during his absence
had introduced a new lock for the transmitter. In
order to attach the lock, it was necessary to bore a
good-sized hole under the casting which held the
diaphragm. This hole formed an ''escape" for the
voice vibrations that went into the mouthpiece, cor-
respondingly weakening their effect on the dia-
phragm. Only a trained and intensive experimenter
like Berliner could have located the cause of this
serious defect so unerringly. Once determined, it
was speedily remedied. The Bell Company realized
that once again, and at another critical moment, the
transmitter had been saved by Berliner's skill.
The Boston of the early 'eighties offered many
attractions for a young man of Emile Berliner's in-
^
James J. Storrow
GuGLiELMO Marconi
Alexander Graham Bell
Maj. Gex. Geo. O. Squier
TRANSMITTER TO EUROPE 157
tellectual bent. Though he lived in a typical New
England city boarding-house of the era, Berliner
studiously warded off the dulling influence of such
an environment and availed himself of the numerous
educational opportunities of "The Hub." The
Boston public library, art institute and symphony
orchestra already were institutions of national re-
pute, and at those fountains of inspiration the young
inventor drank freely in his spare hours.
Work, under great pressure, in connection vdth.
the perfection of the Blake transmitter, brought on
a recurrence of Berliner's nervous troubles, which
only a year previous had threatened so serious con-
sequences. In the midst of his labors at the Bell
laboratory one day, he suffered an attack which re-
quired his instant removal to the Massachusetts
General Hospital. The Bell Company was deeply
concerned over the health of its young scientific lieu-
tenant. General Manager Vail gave instructions
that every conceivable care and attention should be
given Berliner. As soon as Alexander Graham Bell
learned of the inventor's breakdown, he ^dsited him
in the hospital. The consideration and courtesy re-
ceived at Bell's hands did much to give Berliner
courage and strength to rally from his sickbed.
Within ten days he was able to leave the hospital,
though not strong enough to resume work. Instead,
Berliner yielded to the suggestion of Mr. Williams,
the head of the telephone factory, that a period of
recuperation in the New Hampshire hills would
158 EMILE BERLINER
work wonders. So Berliner arranged to make his
home for three weeks in a fisherman's cottage in the
"White Momitains. There, complete rest, sleep and
life in the open accomplished their unfailing cure,
and it was not long before the inventor found
his old-time strength returning. It was during that
beautiful New England spring of 1879 that Berliner
experienced the magic of Nature as a healing agent.
He remembers to this day the buoyancy of his steps
as he again walked the streets of Boston.
Berliner's social contacts in Boston were limited,
but notable and delightful. Alexander Graham
Bell and his family invited him to their home,
a beautiful house in Cambridge which the Bell and
Hubbard families occupied together. There Ber-
liner now and then had opportunity to meet the class
of people who give the Back Bay cultural distinc-
tion. Under the Bell roof, too, Berliner naturally
found agreeable companionship with the field mar-
shals of telephone science, of whom Bell was, of
course, the acknowledged generalissimo.
Maturity had come with his arrival in the throb-
bing thirties, and Berliner now felt himself definitely
launched upon the coveted career of a scientist. To
him it was an ever amazing transition as he looked
back upon his non-technical background and recalled
his humdrum life as a dry-goods clerk.
Berliner could not always hold his o^^^l with
some of the trained scientists who frequented the
Bell-Hubbard home. He was often embarrassed by
TRANSMITTER TO EUROPE 159
finding himself entangled in intricate mathematical
discussions a little beyond one who had left school in
Germany at the age of fourteen, had never had a
single day's schooling in America, and was entirely
self-taught as far as the science of telephony was
concerned. Berliner's embarrassment on this ac-
count was unfailingly removed by the frank pleasure
of new acquaintances in finding themselves in the
presence of an unaffected personality.
Berliner's perfection of the Blake transmitter
had been of so paramount importance that he was
eventually appointed chief instrument inspector of
the Bell Telephone Company. In that capacity it
was his duty to tour the instrument department of
the factory twice a day. On those occasions it was
his habit to question closely his assistant, W. L.
Richards, whom Berliner had placed in charge of
testing work, on all and sundry that was transpir-
ing in connection with the manufacture of instru-
ments. It was, of course, of the most direct and
vital interest to the Bell Company that its appara-
tus should function with faultless precision. The
art, in a commercial sense, was still too young and
the public far too insufficiently acquainted mth the
telephone 's practicability to permit the Bells to run
the risk of catering for patronage with faulty
apparatus.
One episode, destined to be of immense impor-
tance to the talking-machine industry in later years,
came under Berliner 's observation during his scout-
160 EMILE BERLINER
ing trips through the telephone factory. A manu-
facturer of imitation hard rubber offered to produce
hand receivers for the Bell Telephone Company at
less than half the price of instruments composed of
real hard rubber. Vail, the general manager,
turned the proposition over to Berliner, who visited
at Albany the works where the imitation rubber
articles were being made. Berliner was so much
impressed with their beauty and the skill with which
a composition was used for turning them out that
he advised Vail to give the manufacturer a sample
order for equipment of a thousand telephones. They
were handsomer than real rubber, and, after under-
going completion in the AVilliams factory under
Berliner's supervision, telephones fitted with the
imitation rubber material were shipped to a few
selected Bell agents in charge of local exchanges
with instructions to keep them under close observa-
tion.
But reports soon came in that the composition
equipment could not withstand rough treatment and
easily cracked and broke. Its use was forthwith
abandoned. But the experiment, which had proved
rather an expensive failure for the Telephone Com-
pany, served Berliner years afterward, when he
successfully utilized the same imitation rubber com-
position for the pressing of millions of disk sound
records for the gramophone. Other talking ma-
chines copied this process. The identical material,
with slight variations, is used to this day for disk
TRANSMITTER TO EUROPE 161
records, showing that even an abandoned scientific
experiment may contain the seed from which a great
new industry is destined to arise.
Apart from occasional special experiments with
new kinks in telephony, which bobbed np incessantly
from nondescript quarters, Berliner's activities in
the instrument department of the Bell Company be-
came more or less routine. He had worked out the
Blake transmitter so thoroughly that thousands of
those instruments could be produced without diffi-
culty and so perfectly that they kept their adjust-
ment indefinitely. This was the more remarkable
because the transmitter required to be constructed
with the most minute care, whereas the Bell magneto
receiver had no movable parts to get out of adjust-
ment.
It was at this stage of Berliner's career that he
conceived a desire to visit the land of his birth. A
member of his own family, Emile's youngest
brother, Joseph, was now in America, and, being
of a mechanical turn of mind, Berliner secured for
him a position in the Williams telephone factory.
Joseph proved to be an able apprentice. One of
Berliner's personal assistants, a trained English
mechanic, gave Joseph daily instruction after the
plant had closed down for the d'ay. The education
of his brother Joseph was part of a plan upon which
Emile Berliner had been quietly working, namely,
the introduction of telephone transmitters into Eu-
rope. Incidentally, he desired to give two of his
162 EMILE BERLINER
brothers a chance to ''get in on the ground floor" of
the telephone industry in Germany.
Vail readily consented when Emile Berliner
asked the general manager of the Bell Telephone
Company for a leave of absence to visit Europe.
The young inventor had not seen his mother and
brothers and sisters for eleven years. Berliner's
father had meanwhile passed away. Even in the
days of his slender income as a store clerk in Wash-
ington, Berliner had regularly sent money to his
mother, in accordance with the time-honored prac-
tise of the millions of young Europeans who emi-
grated to these treasure shores.
Early in the summer of 1881 Berliner went back
to Germany, under vastly different circumstances
than those which marked his departure from Han-
over in 1870, an emigrant youth possessing little but
dormant talent with which to start life in a new
and strange land. Berliner had by now profited
handsomely from his telephone inventions, though
his rewards were wholly incommensurate with the
returns which inventive achievements like the trans-
mitter would bring to-day. Yet the Bells had given
him what was a fortune for those times — nearly fifty
years ago. His financial prosperity was, of course,
a gratifying testimonial to his merit, but he derived
immensely greater satisfaction from the scientific
recognition his struggles had brought him.
Berliner's widowed mother no longer occupied
the house in Hanover which had sheltered him and
TRANSMITTER TO EUROPE 163
his brothers and sisters in their youth. Four
brothers and two sisters were still alive, some mar-
ried, others making their home with their mother.
Hanover otherwise was much the same. The city
was throbbing with the new industrial energy which
came to Germany after the victorious war with
France and was the seat of prosperous factories of
various sorts. One of its budding new industries
was a rubber works in which a comrade of Ber-
liner's school days, Herman Hecht, was prominent.
The inventor's mother rejoiced in the reunion with
her son after the lapse of ten years, and in his tri-
umphant entry into the newly world-famed science
of telephony. Day after day, for the edification of
his mother, brothers, sisters and old friends, Ber-
liner had to hold forth in minute description of his
life and work in ''free America." In the eyes of
them all he assumed the dimensions of a hero. What
most astonished them, steeped as they were in Ger-
man tradition, was that success in life was possible
mthout influence, and, in a scientific profession,
without university training. Berliner's achieve-
ment, accomplished wholly because of natural abil-
ity and the will to do, struck his Hanoverian kin
and former associates as little short of miraculous.
The Bell magneto telephone was already known
in Germany. To a limited extent it was in use in
various government departments, principally by
the post-office. The largest electric concern of the
time, the firm of Siemens and Halske, of Berlin, was
164 EMILE BERLINER
manufacturing an enlarged Bell magneto telephone.
This was used both as a receiver and a transmitter,
but no battery transmitter was employed.
The young American saw at once the opportun-
ity for introduction in Germany of the telephone
transmitter, or microphone, and the establishment
of a factory for the production of apparatus on the
lines pursued by the Bell- Williams factory in Bos-
ton. In Hanover itself there were as yet no tele-
phones at all, and that situation was characteristic
of practically all Germany.
Berliner proposed that his older brother, Jacob,
who was conducting a small tannery, should form
a partnership with the younger brother, Joseph,
who was still serving his telephone apprenticeship
in America. Emile's idea was that Jacob should be
the financier and business manager of the enter-
prise, while Joseph should attend to its technical
development. It was decided, upon the strength of
Emile's persuasive confidence in the assured and
limitless future of the telephone, to cable Joseph to
return to Germany.
At the same time it was arranged to import a
number of transmitters from the Williams factory.
Thereupon there was launched the "Telephon-Fab-
rik J. Berliner." It soon developed into a very
large producer of telephone apparatus which be-
came famous all over Europe. Eventually it made
rich men of the two brothers whom Emile induced
to enter the virgin field. One of those whom Ber-
TRANSMITTER TO EUROPE 165
liner had tried and failed to interest financially in
the elec]trical business was his schoolmate of Wolf-
enbiittel, Herman Hecht. Hecht conferred with a
number of brother capitalists, but they came to the
conclusion that electrical engineering was still too
visionary a thing to merit the consideration of prac-
tical German business men. The Berliner factory
at Hanover was the first serious step toward the
introduction of modern telephone service into both
Germany and France. In Paris and other French
cities the '^Transmetteur Berliner" was for years
afterward the standard instrument. So the Han-
over lad paved the way for the telephone transmit-
ter or microphone in the Old World, as he had done
in the New.
Having accomplished liis ambition to start his
brothers in the telephone business, Emile devoted
the rest of his sojourn in Germany to recreation and
visits among the cronies and scenes of his early life.
He went to Wolfenbiittel to see the old school and
his headmaster, who exhibited him with beaming
satisfaction as a sample of what the educational
system of that modest, though model, institution
could produce. Emile invited his mother to visit
with him in the Harz Mountains, whence America
imports canary birds, and amid their picturesque
and invigorating hills, Sarah Berliner and her son
lived over again those times, fifteen and twenty
years previous when he was dreaming the ''long,
long thoughts" of youth, though not faintly envis-
166 EMILE BERLINER
ioning what the future held in store for him in
''free America."
In the autumn of 1881, Emile Berliner returned
to the United States to claim in marriage Miss Cora
Adler, to whom he had become engaged just before
leaving for Europe. It was the Adler home on
Sixth Street, "Washington, to which Berliner once
strung "telephone" wires from his lodgings across
the way, and some of his early successes were
achieved while thus combining experiment mtli
courtship. A simple wedding was solemnized in
October and the young couple at once set up house-
keeping in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ^\itliin walk-
ing distance of Harvard Square, while Berliner re-
sumed his duties at the Bell telephone factory in
Boston.
Soon afterward, ^v'ith his assistant Richards in
charge of the instrument department, Berliner was
called upon by the Bell lawyers to assist Professor
Cross, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
in the important experiments required for the con-
duct of the great lawsuits in defense of the Bell-
Berliner patents. On one occasion during the litiga-
tion, when the United States Government's experts
attacked Berliner's microphone caveat (of April 14,
1877) as a mere description of an unfinished inven-
tion, Berliner resorted to an unique demonstration
in rebuttal. He rigged up and adjusted a common
telegraph key such as was mentioned in the caveat
of April 14, 1877, but instead of using the contact
TRANSMITTER TO EUEOPE 167
for sending a telegraph message Berliner made of it
a microphone loose contact, leaving everything else
intact. Then, in the presence of lawyers and
experts, he caused the Government's counsel to
carry on a perfect conversation over a line simply
by talking to the telegraph ''microphone." The
Federal attorney took this conclusive test ^\'ith good
grace. Turning to the telephone company's law-
yers, he exclaimed: ''It does seem incredible!"
The impromptu aural proof thus supplied estab-
lished the completeness and entire sufficiency of the
early Berliner caveat, describing the microphone —
a patent paper later eulogized by James J. Storrow
as "a classical document."
CHAPTER XVIII
HOLDING COMMUNION WITH IMMORTALITY
WHEN the Sesquicentennial throngs in the
summer of 1926 crossed the great steel
bridge that now spans the Delaware from Phila-
delphia to Camden, they found the Jersey sky-line
dominated by a factory of magnificent dimensions.
It has been called the house that Emile Berliner
built — the home of the *' talking machine."
Many men and many minds participated in its
erection. But Berliner's part — the invention of the
lateral cut disk record — was the corner-stone.
Upon it there was reared and now firmly rests the
w^hole '' talking machine" industry throughout the
world. As the telephone was impracticable until
Emile Berliner completed it, so the art of reproduc-
ing and perpetuating sound remained imperfect
until the inventor of the microphone turned his
attention to the "talking machine."
The result was the invention of the gramophone.
The gramophone — gramma, a letter, and phone,
a sound — according to Noah Webster [Imperial
Dictionary, page 798) is "a device invented by E.
Berliner to record, retain and reproduce sounds. It
168
COMMUNION WITH IMMORTALITY 169
differs from a phonograph in ha\dng a circular disk
upon which tracings are made by a recording style,
and from which sounds are reproduced by another
kind of style attached to the diaphragm of any one
of various types of reproducers." Berliner not only
invented the gramophone, but corned its. name.
So terse and technical a description of Emile
Berliner's second triumph in his chosen field of
acoustics does necessarily scant justice to its real
contribution to human happiness and to civilization
at large. To have invented the microphone-trans-
mitter, as one of Berliner's early eulogists observed,
*' would be sufficient for the glory of a single life."
But the task to which the restless scientist now dedi-
cated his energies was to culminate in an achieve-
ment that is likely to be ranked by posterity not
very far behind the boon of the telephone.
What Berliner was about to do — in his own
graphic language — was to ''etch the human voice."
Michael Angelo, with brush and chisel, immortalized
the human form, but, despite God-given talent, left
it — as all modelers in marble and oil perforce must
do — '''mute, inglorious." Emile Berliner took hu-
man sound, whether uttered in speech or song, and
reproduced it, not as a parody as in the tinfoil
phonograph or in the wax-cylinder graphophone,
which were already in existence, but in accurate and
fadeless form, to echo down the ages as long as time
endures. He enabled mankind to ''hold communion
with immortality." Masterpieces in oil have been
170 EMILE BERLINER
copied as etchings. Many original creations have
been made by etchers. But to etch the human voice
constituted a superb extension of the etching art
into the realm of physics, acoustics and of the hu-
man, living drama.
For the better part of the subsequent half-cen-
tury civilization the world over has been the sweeter
and the nobler for the entertainment and the edu-
cation that came with the ''talking machine."
Until its dawn, the music of the masters and its
rendition by interpreters of distinction were the
luxurious privilege of the cultured few ; and not even
always of them, for to enjoy Beethoven, Liszt and
Chopin, and hear the great orchestras, the virtuosos
of piano, violin, cello and harp, or the song-birds of
international repute, meant the ability to purchase
such cultural opportunities at prices beyond the
purse of the average person.
The advent of the "talking machine," and quite
particularly of Emile Berliner's contribution to it —
the thing we know as the *' record" — brought Apollo
into the homes of the children of men everywhere.
It turned the humblest fireside into an opera-
house. It taught the cowboy to whistle Wagner and
Tosti. It made Melba and Caruso the familiar com-
panions of music-lovers far and wide. It made
William Jennings Bryan the speaker of the evening
in a myriad of living-rooms. It banished loneliness
and solitude from the life of the lowliest. On one
of Emile Berliner's walls there hangs a picture be-
COMMUNION WITH IMMORTALITY 171
neath which, in his o^^^l handwriting, are the words :
''In Touch with Civilization."
The story of that picture was once quaintly told
by him in a paper on The Development of the Talk-
ing Machine before the Franklin Institute;
"It shows a giant lumberman reposing placidly
on a rough bench in front of his crude log cabin in
the mlds of western Canada. Nothing but forest
and mountains surround him. His ax and shot-gun
lean against the cabin within easy reach. He is
smoking his pipe, and his faithful dog crouches at
his feet. His nearest neighbors are miles away. In
days gone by, the solitude of his existence would
have been but rarely relieved by diversions or pleas-
ures, and then only by occasional visits to the cen-
ters of supplies, where barrooms, gambling dens and
low dance-halls satisfied his yearning for a change
from his dreary and laborious daily existence.
*'But now there stands in front of him a rough
dry-goods box, on it an old-time horn gramophone
and a stack of disk records. The concert halls, the
vaudeville and opera-houses of the world are repre-
sented in that pile. English statesmen and Amer-
ican presidents may talk to the lumberjack as if face
to face, and he can entertain his occasional visitors
■with the same choice selections that are heard in
the drawing-rooms of mansions occupied by the
favored few, be they in the capitals or greatest cities
on another side of the globe."
On May 16, 1888, Berliner gave before the Frank-
lin Institute of Philadelphia the first exhibition of
the gramophone, patented by him a few months
previous. The exhibition consisted of the grinding
out on his hand-driven machine of half a dozen
172 EMILE BERLINER
*'phonautograms" — the name for records in those
primitive days — which reproduced, respectively, in
music and in spoken words, the following program:
1. Baritone solos: Yankee Doodle; Baby Mine}
Nancy Lee.
2. Cornet Solo.
3. Baritone Solo: Tar's Farewell.
4. Soprano Solo: Home Sweet Home; Annie
Laurie.
5. Tenor Solo: A Wandering Minstrel I.
6. Recitation: The Declaration of Independence.
Then Berliner, having electrified the members
of the Franklin Institute with alluring evidence of
the gramophone's present, invited them to accom-
pany him on a prophetic tour into the field of its
future. Here is his flight into fancy thirty-eight
years ago, long before the needles of the talking ma-
chine had scratched the surface of its possibilities:
**A standard reproducing apparatus, simple in
construction and easily manipulated, mil, at a mod-
erate selling price, be placed on the market.
*' Those having one may then buy an assortment
of Phonautograms, to be increased occasipnally,
comprising recitations, songs, chorus and instru-
mental solos or orchestral pieces of every variety.
*'In each city there will be at least one office hav-
ing a gramophone recorder with all the necessary-
outfits. There will be an acoustic cabinet, or acousti-
con, containing a very large funnel or other sound
concentrator, the narrow end of which ends in a tube
leading to the recording diaphragm. At the wide
COMMUNION WITH IMMOETALITY 173
opening of the funnel will be placed a piano, and
back of it a semicircular wall for reflecting the sound
into the funnel. Persons desirous of ha\T.ng their
voice taken mil step before the funnel and, upon a
giten signal, sing or speak, or they may perform
upon an instrument. While they are waiting the
plate will be developed, and when it is satisfactory,
it is turned over to the electrotyper or to the molder
in charge, who will make as many copies as desired.
''Prominent singers, speakers or performers
may derive an income from royalties on the sale
of their phonautograms, and valuable plates may be
printed and registered to protect against unauthor-
ized publication.
*' Collections of phonautograms may become
very valuable, and whole evenings ^\^11 be spent at
home going through a long list of interesting per-
formances. Who will deny the beneficial influence
which civilization wdll experience when the voices of
dear relatives and friends long departed, the utter-
ances of the great men and women who lived cen-
turies before, the radiant songs of Patti, Campanini,
and others, the dramatic voices of Booth, Irving and
Bernhardt, and the humor of Nye and Riley can be
heard and reheard in every Avell-furnished parlor.
''Last wills can be registered with the testators'
own voices, and important testimony can be sent
from afar and read in court, and the voice so pro-
duced can be testified to by friends present.
"Languages can be taught by having a good
elocutionist speak classical recitations, and sell
copies of his voice to students. In this department
alone, and that of teaching elocution generally, an
immense field is to be filled by the gramophone.
"Addresses — congratulatory, political or other-
wise— can be delivered by proxy so loudl}^ that the
audience will be almost as if conscious of the speak-
er's presence.
"A singer unable to appear at a concert may
174 EMILE BERLINER
send lier voice and be represented as per program,
and conventions will listen to distant sympathizers,
be they thousands of miles away.
"Future generations mil be able to condense
within the space of twenty minutes a tone picture of
a single lifetime. Five minutes of a child's prattle,
five of the boy's exultations, five of the man's re-
flections, and five from the feeble utterances from
the death-bed. Will it not be like holding communion
even with immortality?"
CHAPTER XIX
BIETH OF THE TALKING MACHINE
IT IS a curious coincidence that although it was in
America that both the telephone and the talking
machine were actually invented and perfected, it
was from France that the fundamental ideas under-
lying each of them sprang.
Charles Bourseuil, a Frenchman, first evolved the
theory of sending speech by telegraph in 1854. An-
other Frenchman, Leon Scott, invented in 1857 the
first instrument for recording, though not reproduc-
ing, the vibrations of the human voice and of musi-
cal instruments. Scott's device was the **phonauto-
graph." This is usually regarded as a precursor of
the ** talking machine," even though it had little in
common with the instrument we know to-day by that
name. Scott's phonautograph could only register
sound, which was projected against a diaphragm
and recorded on a moving cylinder around which
paper covered with lampblack was wrapped. A
lever or stylus was attached to the diaphragm, and
this stylus traced the record on the smoked paper.
What makes a talldng machine talk? Emile Ber-
175
176 EMILE BERLINER
liner answers the question tersely and clearly.
''Fundamentally it is this," he saj^s. "^ound
throT\ai against a diaphragm makes it vibrate. If a
needle is attached to the center and made to touch a
moving surface, for instance, semi-hard wax, the
point of the needle will trace or cut sound vibrations
into the wax. This is called a sound record. If now
the diaphragm and needle are made to retrace the
record, the vibratory tracings previously made will
cause the diaphragm to re-vibrate and thereby re-
produce the original sound."
The development and history of the talking ma-
chine began with Scott's phonautograph. It con-
sisted of a good-sized horizontal cylinder mounted
on a screw and turned by hand, which gave the cylin-
der a slowly progressive motion. The cylinder was
covered with paper; this was smoked over a sooty
flame to an even film of black. At right angles to the
cylinder was a large-sized barrel-shaped horn which
was closed by a diaphragm and to the center of the
diaphragm was fixed a flexible bristle, so adjusted
that the point of the bristle just touched the smoked
surface. When the cylinder was turned any sound
uttered into the barrel traced sound waves into the
sooty surface. The phonautograph was one of the
first machines utilizing a diaphragm for visual
studies of a voice record. In the National Museum
at Washing-ton there is an old original Scott Phon-
autograph which Professor Joseph Henry used in
his studies of sound vibrations.
BIRTH OF TALKING MACHINE 177
During the summer of 1877, when America's at-
tention was still riveted on the speaking telephone,
and on all and sundry connected with that miracle,
Edward H. Johnson, who was associated with
Thomas A. Edison, embarked upon a lecture tour
devoted to the public presentation of past and pros-
pective achievements in technical science, especially
electro-magnetics. A considerable portion of Mr.
Johnson's lecture consisted of a description of a
device which Edison had worked out. By means of
it the inventor thought it would be possible to send
a mechanically registered voice message to any of
the few Bell telephone stations then in operation,
and thence have it transmitted automatically over
wires. This process would have been the equivalent
of sending the usual written message by telegraph.
Edison's idea was to mount a diaphragm and a
stylus, or needle, against a moving strip of paper,
talk the message to the diaphragm, and let the stylus
indent the mo\^ng strip, with the characters of
speech appearing as a continuous groove containing
these up-and-down indentations. The strip was to
be sent to the telephone station and passed over a
transmitter on the diaphragm of which was another
stylus. This stylus followed the voice indentations
and thereby caused voice undulations in the current,
as if some one had spoken to the transmitter di-
rectly. Thus the message could be sent by a sort of
automatic telephone repeater.
According to the testimony of Edward H. John-
178 EMILE BEELINEE
son, contained in an address published in the Elec-
trical World, New York, on February 22, 1890, the
graphic term "talking machine" was not the inven-
tion of Mr. Edison, but of a clever head-line writer
on a Buffalo newspaper.
'*In the course of one of my lectures, or impro-
vised talks," Mr. Johnson narrated, "it occurred to
me that it would be a good idea to tell my audience
about Edison's telephone repeater, at Buffalo,
which I did. My audience seemed to have a much
clearer appreciation of the value of the invention
than we had ourselves. They gave me such a cheer
as I have seldom heard. I did not comprehend the
impoi^tance of the device at the time; but the next
morning the Buffalo papers announced in glaring
head-lines :
*A Great Discovery: A Talking Machine by Pro-
fessor Edison. Mr. Edison's Wonderful Instrument
Will Produce Articulate Speech With All the Per-
fections of the Human Voice. '
"I realized for the first time that Edison had, as
a matter of fact, invented a talking machine. The
immediate importance of it to me was that this cre-
ated a sensation, and I had very large audiences in
all my entertainments thereafter. Realizing that
and having had sufficient experience by this time to
profit by such things, I made a special point of this
feature in m}^ next entertainment, which was at
Rochester, and I had a crowded house — one that did
my heart good — and my pocket, too. That satisfied
me that I had better go home and assist in perfect-
ing this instrument.
"I knew, from my own experience in the matter,
that it was a comparatively simple thing to do, so I
canceled thirteen engagements and went back home
BIRTH OF TALKING MACHINE 179
with those newspaper clippings. I went straight
down to the laboratory, which was then at Newark,
and I said: *Mr. Edison, look here. See the trouble
you have got me into.' He read these things over
and said : ' That is so ; they are right. This is w^hat
it is — a talking machine. ' I said : ' Can you make it ? '
He said, *0f course. Have you got any money T I
said, 'Yes, I have a little,' and I had a little. He
said: 'Go to New York and get me three feet of stub
steel an inch and a half in diameter, and a piece of
brass pipe four inches in diameter and six or eight
inches long, and we will make it. '
*'I took the next train to New York and got the
material and took it back and went to work. Within
twenty-four hours we had a little revolving cylinder
turned with a crank and a simple diaphragm needle,
wrapped a sheet of tinfoil around the cylinder, and
gave it the original phonographic sentence, 'Mary
Had a Little Lamb.' Then we sat back, to see what
the instrument was going to do about it. It came
out to our entire satisfaction. Not as clear as it
does to-day, but it was 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'
sure enough. That was. the original phonograph.^ '
This happened in the fall of 1877. It is, however,
a matter of record that Charles Cros, a Frenchman,
as early as April thirtieth of that year, actually de-
posited mth the Academy of Sciences in Paris a
sealed envelope containing a document in which
Cros described a fundamental idea for reproducing
speech from a record of the voice previously made
on a moving surface. The contents were described
as "A Process of Recording and Reproducing
Audible Phenomena." It was not until December 3,
1877, that the Cros paper was divulged in an open
180 EMILE BEELIXER
discussion of the Academy of Sciences. Meantime
Edison appeared with the phonograph.
The Edison tinfoil cylinder phonograph was
presently exhibited all over the world. To be sure,
the reproduction it made was little better than a
parody of the voice. Every indentation made by the
voice was changed by the wave and the indentation
follomng it, because the tinfoil readily yielded to
direct or adjoining pressure. The inevitable result
was a general distortion of the record. But as a
scientific and ingenious curiosity the original tinfoil
phonograph ranked high, even though after a few
years it was forgotten by the public at large.
A year or two after the invention of the tele-
phone Alexander Graham Bell received from the
French Government a gift of money, known as the
Volta Prize, for the invention of the telephone.*
With the money Bell built and equipped the Volta
Laboratory' in Washington for the purpose of carry-
ing on scientific research, in particular in matters
relating to sound and acoustics.
Among the men engaged to conduct the Volta
Laboratory were Alexander Graham Bell's cousin,
Chichester A. Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter.
Bell and Tainter agreed that it might be pos-
*Ale3sandro Volta in 1800 made the first electric cell. His bat-
tery, OP "voltaic pile," consisted of a number of silver coins and an
equal number of zinc disks of the same size. The silver and zinc
disks were piled alternately on top of one another, with pieces of
moist cloth between the disks. Wires were fastened to the top and
bottom of the pile, and, when they were joined, Volta obtained a
steadily flowing current of electricity. Thus did electrical engineer-
ing begin. [A Popular History of American Invention.]
L
Gramophoxe SotixD Tracings
Gramophone Eeproducer, 1889
Gramophone Eecorder, 1888
BIRTH OF TALKING MACHTNE 181
Bible to improve the Edison tinfoil phonograph
so as to make it a serviceable "talking ma-
chine." After endless experimental work, they
finally decided that distortion of the voice recorded
by indenting the vibration into tinfoil might be
avoided if, instead, the voice vibrations were cut into
wax or a wax-like substance by a very small, sharp
chisel attached to the center of a diaphragm. Their
reasoning was thoroughly logical and scientific.
FortlR\'ith the process that was evolved from it, viz.,
a wax record cut with a chisel, produced a vast im-
provement over the Edison record indented into tin-
foil. Bell and Tainter received a patent for it on
May 4, 1886.
In the spring of 1887 the Bell-Tainter instru-
ment, which they had christened "graphophone,"
was first exhibited. It was the first really practical
apparatus of the phonograph type and excited the
animated admiration of crowds in Washington and
other places where it was displayed. The American
Graphophone Company was organized by Philadel-
phia capitalists to exploit the machine. The com-
pany established a factory and embarked commer-
cially upon the production of talking machines and
of wax-covered paper-cylinder records.
Berliner's Franklin Institute address on the
gramophone, in June, 1888, contained the following
paragraph :
''Soon after the graphophone became generally
known, Mr. Edison took again to experimenting with
182 EMILE BERLINEE
the phonograph, and also settled upon a cylinder of
wax and the graving-out process, thus confirming
the correctness of the Bell-Tainter conclusions. The
new Edison phonograph and the graphophone ap-
pear to he practically the same apparatus, differing
only in form and motive power."
It was the cylinder type of talking machine that
finally developed into the dictaphone, a form of wax-
cylinder graphophone now in so common use in
offices for stenographic and typing purposes, and
frequently impressed into the service of the detec-
tive's mysterious art.
CHAPTER XX
BEBLINER INVENTS THE GRAMOPHONE
IN 1883 Emile Berliner and his bride, after two
years of honeymoon existence within the cul-
tured shadow of ''fair Harvard" at Cambridge, re-
sumed their residence in Washington. Berliner had
come to the conclusion that the National Capital,
besides being the country's political metropolis, was
also its scientific hub. The Smithsonian Institution
and the United States Patent Office were there. In-
tellectual achievement in America, in countless di-
rections, has had its origin and inspiration on the
Potomac, the atmosphere of which, of course, had
for Berliner in addition the sentimental charm of
the environment in which success in his chosen pro-
fession came to the inventor of the microphone.
Washington, in the days of the Arthur administra-
tion, was still a horse-car town, with few indications
of its impending twentieth-century importance and
grandeur. But Berliner decided, all things consid-
ered, that it was the natural place in which to pitch
his tent.
One of the recognized captains of the new tele-
phone industry at thirty-two years of age, and with
a competence that was more than comfortable for
183
184 EMILE BERLINER
conditions of the time, Berliner might easily have
quit the anxious and arduous field of inventive en-
deavor, and rested leisurely upon his telephone
laurels. No thought was remoter from his desires
or intentions. His telephonic studies had familiar-
ized him wdth all the causes influencing the trans-
mission and reproduction of the voice. The idea of
devising something that would perfectly record
human sound seemed to him like a natural sequel to
the art of telephony, to the success of which Ber-
liner had contributed so substantially. He deter-
mined forthwith to devote himself to the invention
of a talking machine on original lines.
Now a full-fledged citizen of the United States
and the head of a family, Berliner's first objective
in Washington was the establishment of a home.
Forty-three years ago the Columbia Heights section
of the capital was a suburban region that suggested
a passion for solitude on the part of any one who
built there. But Berliner was not dissuaded from
his purpose by friends who advised against "going
out into the country to live." So he reared him-
self a spacious and substantial dwelling of brick
and stone on Columbia Road, only a couple of
miles north of the White House, yet, in those days,
a remote district of Washington. To-day, atop **the
Hill," as the neighborhood is called, Columbia Road
is the center of a throbbing business and residential
quarter. Ultra-fashionable Sixteenth Street — ''Ave-
nue of the Presidents" — is just around the corner,
INVENTS THE GRAMOPHONE 185
with its noble row of foreign embassies and stately
church edifices, and stretching in a bee-line for half
a dozen picturesque miles straightaway from the
White House to the Maryland line. Berliner was a
pioneer believer in the metropolitan destinies of
"Washington and to-day has extensive land holdings
acquired in times when the possibilities of the City
of Magnificent Distances were not realized by many
of its citizens.
In a front up-stairs room of his beautiful home
on Columbia Eoad, which became a local landmark
and was owned by him until 1925, Emile Ber-
liner installed a small laboratory. It was destined
to be the cradle of the gramophone — the term which
he himself coined and which was the description
applied to his machine in the application for a
patent issued November 12, 1887. As in the case of
his telephone inventions, Berliner evolved the
gramophone only after long and persistent experi-
ment. His family saw little of him in those plodding
days and for the most part was kept in ignorance of
exactly what it was that the restless young inventor
was now tinkering with in his home workshop.
The old Leon Scott phonautograph, on exhibition
in the National Museum, fascinated Berliner, and he
had been giving it incessant and analytical study.
Its soundness of theory was no less apparent than
its obvious crudities. The status of talking machines
in 1887-1888, when Berliner 's experiments were ripe
for practical results, he himself set forth as follows :
186 EMILE BERLINER
* * The tinfoil phonograph of Edison had been known
for ten years and was a scientific curiosity only,
though of historic value. The wax cylinder phono-
graph or graphophone of Chichester Bell and
Sumner Tainter had been invented, and its aim, as
pronounced by its promoters, was to become a dicta-
graph for private and business correspondence.
Both machines represented a system of sound
recording in which sound waves were either ver-
tically indented, as in the Edison phonograph, or
vertically engraved into a wax cylinder, as in the
Bell-Tainter graphophone. In reproducing these
records a feed screw was provided which turned
either the cylinder past the needle or the reproduc-
ing sound-box past the cylinder."
Berliner's gramophone changed all this. Its
record was made horizontally and parallel with the
record surface. By itself it formed the screw or
spiral which propelled the reproducing sound-box,
so that while the needle was vibrated it was at the
same time pushed forward by the record groove. As
the sound-box was mounted in such a manner that it
was free to follow this propelling movement, it made
the reproducer adjust itself automatically to the
record. The horizontal record of the gramophone
was more capable of recording somid in its entirety.
In the vertical record of the phonograph-grapho-
phone there was a certain distortion which became
more pronounced the deeper the sound waves in-
dented or engraved the record substance.
INVENTS THE GRAMOPHONE 187
Berliner's attention was riveted upon three dis-
tinct phases of the talking-macliine art, and upon
them he proceeded to concentrate. He set out to
perfect (1) a photo-engraving process ; (2) a scheme
for ''etching the human voice" — another of the in-
genious idioms which he minted; and (3) a duplicat-
ing method whereby it would be possible to make an
Unlimited number of records of the same voice-
registration out of some tough, wear-resisting mate-
rial like celluloid or hard rubber.
"Berliner's idea of constructing a matrix, en-
abling records to be pressed in large quantities for
sale, was entirely novel," says Alfred Clark, the
American Managing Director of the Gramophone
Company, Ltd., of Middlesex, England. "It is the
basis of the great gramophone industry throughout
the world to-day. Without it, the talking-machine
business would have remained in a dwarf state. To
Emile Berliner's conception is wholly due the fact
that literally millions of records of a dance number
or a great instrumental or vocal masterpiece, by
orchestra, band or soloist, are now struck of£ from
the one original."
When the graphophone came out in 1887, Ber-
liner's sharply trained ear at once discerned that,
while the process of cutting the record was better
than indenting it, distortion of the voice had yet to
be overcome. He finally concluded that the cause of
distortion could never be removed by the method of
recording up and down into the wax, no matter how
18S lOMIlJO Kl'^K'LlNMR
(Iclic/iloly the iiiecliaiiical parts oi" llio macliiuo might
be consirnciod.
For oxani|)!(\ if oiio wore to ])iisli a load ])oiu'il
throng:h and along the surface of a cake of soap, it
-v^oiild roquiro a oortaiii amount of foi'oo to do it. It
is jiossible in a laboratory to measure this foree. If
the pencil wore pushed Across the soap at a depth of,
snjs one-sixteenth of an inch and at a speed of ono
inch |)er second, it would recpiire, say, five ounces of
])rossuro by the hand to do it. But if the t)oncil were
ptlshod across at a depth of ()ne-cii>hth of aii inch
(twice the depth), it would not take simply twice the
flmoutit of pressure (/'. c, ten ounces), but three or
fouf times the amount.
So Berliner saw that to make a Ivai record l\y
causing tlu^ sound vibrjilions to cut i(p and down
meant, according to the laws of physics, that the
vibrations, while being registered, would contin-
uously be cut out of propoiMlon to the force used by
the voice. A distortion of the voice would inevitably
result. A more perfect method would consist, Ber-
liner' argued, in so registering the voice that the
force required to do so would prevent distortion of
the registered vibrations, lie concluded that the
vibrations nnist all be of the same depth. From this
theory ho developed what ever since has been known
ns the lafcrcd rut record, in which the vibrations are
tocot'ded Mdarisc like writing. MMiis, as Mr. Olark
of the Fnglish granio])lHnio c(un]iany ])oints out, is
Another fundamental factor in the talking-machino
art as we know it to-day.
INVENTS THE GRAMOPHONE 189
As the Bell-Tainter patents for the graphophone
covered every form of a record cut in wax, Berliner
determined to go back to the original recording idea
of the Scott phonautograph of 1857 and from that
to produce a record groove by the process of photo-
engraving. With this conclusion in mind he con-
structed a small cylinder phonautograph and started
makir ttern records of his voice on a paper sur-
face was fastened around the cylinder and
was with soot from a smoky flame. He
"fixed voice writings by pouring a shellac solu-
tion ovt'L I tom.
After Berliner had become quite proficient in
these exjjcriments he cut one of the paper tubes into
a strip, and took this ''voice writing" to Maurice
Joyce, a well-known photo-engraver in Washington,
who etched the record into a piece of flat zinc.
Berliner then sawed off the front part of a telephone
receiver, the portion that held the diaphragm, and
affixed to it a stylus (or needle) across the center so
that the free end of the needle extended beyond the
diaphragm. To this free end he attached a steel pin,
stuck a small horn into the hole of the sound box,
and moved the point of the pin through the photo-
engraved lines by hand. The vibrations of the voice
in the plate (in this early process, photo-engraved)
moved the point of the pin, which in turn set the
diaphragm vibrating and thereby reproduced the
original talk. In that manner Berliner got snatches
of articulation coming as from a human voice. It
proved that his general conception was correct.
190 EMILE BERLINER
After having fully satisfied himself that the lat-
eral cut was the only logical and perfect process for
correctly recording the voice, Berliner's next step
was to rig up a turn-table similar to that used now-
adays on disk talking machines. His machine was
hand-driven, which meant the turning of a handle
during the whole time a record was played, but it
contained a fly wheel that insured regularity of mo-
tion. A small framework that could be moved side-
wise by a screw held the recording sound box. On the
turn-table Berliner laid a heavy round glass plate
made for the purpose, which could be taken off and
blackened over a smoky flame. The recording sound
box was carefully adjusted; so that an elastic stylus
just touched the smoky surface of the glass plate. In
this manner a flat disk record was finally produced.
After the record had been ''fixed" by shellac
varnish, Berliner took it to Joyce, who quickly
turned out the first flat disk-record made by the
photo-engraving process. This historic "pancake"
has an honorable place among scientific relics in the
National Museum at Washington.
While Berliner reproduced from this first disk
record, he noticed that even when he disengaged the
screw mechanism the record groove itself would
hold the stylus of the sound box. Immediately he
realized that in voice reproducing the screw mechan-
ism could be discarded. It has never been used since
then.
Besides its reproducing superiority, the gramo-
INVENTS THE GBAMOPHONE 191
phone mechanism was of materially greater sim-
plicity. For reproducing a phonograph-graphophone
record, because it was done in a soft material, a fine
screw mechanism was required to propel the repro-
ducing sound box and stylus needle across the
record lines. In the gramophone record, which was
in hard material like metal or composition, the
record disk is merely revolved; the needle of the
sound box is dropped into the groove, and this, while
playing the music, not only vibrates the diaphragm
(throwing the music into the horn), but also propels
the needle across the record disk at the same time.
It will be seen that this automatic propulsion is
necessarily smoother than where propulsion is
caused by an outside, unrelated force. The self-
propulsion which Berliner oiiginated was eventually
applied to all existing talking machines as soon as
Berliner's patent expired in 1912.
Early in 1888 Berliner fitted up a couple of
rooms on G Street, not far from the quarters he
occupied when he invented the microphone eleven
years before. He needed a more central location for
his busy workshop and now continued his researches
witliin the shadow of the United States Patent Office.
Preceding an address which Berliner made there in
March, 1926, before four hundred patent examiners,
the Assistant Commissioner of Patents, William A.
Kinnan, who presided over the meeting, introduced
the veteran scientist with the remark that ''many
inventors had laid a biick, here and there, in the
192 EMILE BERLINER __^
structure of civilization, but here is a man who has
added a whole wall."
Berliner now indulged in the luxury of an as-
sistant by the name of Werner Suess, who once
worked for Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen, a professor
at Heidelberg University. A noted chemist and
physicist, von Bunsen in 1855 invented the burner
which bears his name. Since then it has been pos-
sible to burn coal gas with an intensely hot and
smokeless flame. Everybody who lights an ordinary
gas stove is putting to work a series of Bunsen
burners. Suess was the man who constructed one of
the two induction coils Berliner used when, years
before, he had fashioned his triumphant telephone
apparatus. He was older than Berliner — a quaint,
stocky, sturdy, ruddy-faced, bespectacled German
and had been a close student of Berliner's work
during the intervening years, Suess, though only a
mechanic, was full of intelligent interest and en-
thusiasm. He was also addicted to telling stories
and the little Berliner laboratory was not exclu-
sively an arena of scientific discussion.
Emile Berliner was now sure that a perfected
disk talking machine had a great future, and that
records for such a machine could be duplicated end-
lessly, provided the process was carefully worked
out. That became his next objective.
CHAPTER XXI
ETCHING THE HUMAN VOICE
ON May 16, 1888, six months after the issuance
of his gramophone patent, Emile Berliner
gave the first public exhibition of his ingenious
method of ''etching the human voice." The scene
of that epoch-making event, as befitted its scientific
importance, was the Franklin Institute at Philadel-
phia, which had in\'ited Berliner to read at one of its
stated meetings a paper on his latest achievement in
acoustics.
To that famed American clearing-house for the
display and elucidation of the newest things in sci-
ence, Berliner, accompanied by the faithful and
rotund Suess, trundled through the streets of the
Centennial City a strange collection of parapherna-
lia, including the gramophone recorder, the record-
ing diaphragm and stylus, and the reproducing
apparatus.
It was universally realized that both the tele-
phone and the talking machine, although they had
long since ceased to be novelties, were only in their
swaddling clothes. Men with vision recognized and
discerned their illimitable possibilities, but these
193
194 EMILE BERLINER
were yet to emerge. The Franklin Institute's in-
terest in what Berliner had to reveal in the talking-
machine field was correspondingly eager. At the
old graystone building on South Seventh Street, a
etill existing symbol of the Philadelphia of intellec-
tual tradition, Berliner and Suess found the little
amphitheater-like auditorium packed to its farther-
most seat with some four hundred men and women
on the tiptoe of expectancy.
Curiosity was particularly keen mth regard to
the inventor's process of recording sound waves,
whereby the human voice was captured, imprisoned
in enduring metal, liberated at will, and then locked
up again. Spoiled, matter-of-fact moderns, addicted
to the habit of taking miracles for granted, can only
imagine the sensation which Berliner's gramophone
concert caused at Philadelphia. It was the debut of
** canned music" — John Philip Sousa's celebrated
description of the talking-machine art. To-day, di-
rectly across the Delaware from Philadelphia at
Camden, ''His Master's Voice," thanks to Emile
Berliner's pioneer achievement, is reproduced in
millions of exemplars for the entertainment and the
education of the civilized universe. In May, 1913,
on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first exliibi-
tion of the gramophone on its premises, the Frank-
lin Institute awarded Berliner its highest honor —
the Elliott Cresson gold medal "in recognition of
important contributions to telephony and to the
science and art of sound reproduction." On the
ETCHING THE HUMAN VOICE 195
same occasion medals were presented to Charles
Proteus Steinmetz "for achievements in the field of
electrical engineering"; to Lord Rayleigh, of Eng-
land, *'for researches in physical science," and to
Emil Fischer, of Berlin, ''for contributions to the
science of organic and biological chemistry."
The lesson of simplicity which the telephone was
continuously preaching caused Berliner at an early
date to look for a simpler plan to attain his purpose
in connection with the talking machine. In the
specification originally filed by him at the United
States Patent Office, he said: ''This record [mean-
ing the phonautogram] may then be engraved either
mechanically, chemically, or photo-chemically." Al-
though for a long time mthout much hope for suc-
cess, the idea of the purely chemical process of
direct etching haunted him continuously, and was
repeatedly suggested by others.
It was more easily suggested than carried out.
Under the principles of the gramophone the etching
ground was to offer practically no resistance to the
stylus. To construct a ground which had no resist-
ance mechanically, but would resist the etching fluid
after the tracing was done, was the problem to be
solved.
"You ^rill readily see," Berliner told his Frank-
lin Institute audience in May, 1888, "that if we can
cover, for instance, a polished metal plate with a
delicate etching ground, trace in this a phonauto-
gram, and then immerse the plate in an etching fluid,
196 EMILE BERLINER
the lines will be eaten in, and the result will be a
groove of even depth, such as is required for repro-
duction. Such a process, of course, would be much
more direct and quicker than the photo-engraving
method.
"In nature provision seems to be made for all the
wants of mankind. Confident in this belief, I kept
on tiying to find a trail which would lead to promis-
ing results, and I have the honor to-night, for the
first time, to bring before you this latest achieve-
ment in the art of producing permanent sound
records from which a reproduction can be obtained,
if necessary, mthin fifteen or twenty minutes, and
which can be accurately multiplied in any number
by the electrotype process. It may be termed, in
short, the art of etching the human voiced
The etching ground which Berliner used was a
fatty ink. One of the best inks he discovered was
made by digesting pure yellow beeswax in cold gaso-
line or benzine. Benzine in a cold state did not dis-
solve all the elements of the wax, but only a small
part — namely, that which combined with the yellow
coloring principle. The resultant and decanted ex-
tract was a clear solution of a golden hue, which
gradually became bleached by exposure to light.
The proi>ortions Berliner employed were one ounce
of finely scraped wax to one pint of gasoline.
He then took a polished metal plate — generally
zinc — and flowed the fluid on and off, as if he were
coating with collodion. The benzine quickly evap-
ETCHING THE HUMAN VOICE 197
orated and there remained a very thin layer of wax
fat, iridescent under reflected light, not solid as a
coating produced by immersion in a melted mass,
but spongy or porous, and extremely sensitive to the
lightest touch. Partly on account of the too great
sensitiveness of a single film, and also as an addi-
tional protection against the action of the acids em-
ployed in the subsequent etching, Berliner applied
a second coating of the solution. This double coat,
he found, answered all requirements.
With many weeks of tedious experiment behind
him, Berliner now took a number of zinc disks, had
them highly polished, cleaned the surface with gaso-
line, warmed them and poured the yellow fat solu-
tion over them. In the meantime he had constructed
a turn-table machine on which the prepared zinc disk
could be mounted and revolved at regular speed,
while a small reservoir of alcohol dripped the fluid
on the fatty film. The previously used phonauto-
graphic recording sound box and stylus were
mounted over the disk so that the point of the stylus
cut through the fatty film. The whole mechanism
was given a progressive motion, so that when the
disk was rotated the stylus of the sound box in-
scribed a spiral line into the fatty film. If now
somebody spoke into the phonautogi^aphic sound
box, the line in the fatty film assumed the wavy
forms of the sound vibrations ; and when the record
disk was immersed into the acid solution the record
lines were etched into the zinc, forming a groove of
198 EMILE BERLINER
even depth and varying direction as distinguislied
from the phonograph-graphophone record consist-
ing of a groove of straight direction, but of varying
deyth.
By the early spring of 1888 Berliner had made
sufficient progress to enable him to manufacture
modern disk sound records out of zinc plates. To
make records, he invited pianists, violinists, singers
and lecturers to his laboratory. One day a couple of
Spaniards arrived with an introduction from a mu-
tual friend. They wanted to see the gramophone in
action. Berliner had just made an exceptionally
good record of a coloratura soprano, and he played
it for his temperamental callers, placing them di-
rectly in front of the horn. One of them, a black-
eyed, fiery South American, became very excited,
as the amorous tones of the invisible prima donna
emerged from a mysterious somewhere. When the
singer finished, on a beautiful high trill, the Span-
iard, all enraptured, turned to Berliner and enthu-
siastically exclaimed: "Oh, I could just hees herP*
Once Berliner's father-in-law waited outside of
the laboratory because he heard the inventor speak-
ing as if engaged in making a record. When the
monologue was finished, Mr. Adler walked in, and,
to his surprise, found that Berliner had not spoken
at all, but was merely playing a record of his own
voice. Experiences like these convinced Berliner
that he was on the high road to practical results
with the gramophone.
ETCHING THE HUMAN VOICE 199
The Franklin Institute exhibition proved to be
the forerunner of a tremendous activity and of a de-
velopment in the talking-machine industry that has
not halted to this day. Berliner had thus far been
able to display original first records only, although at
Philadelphia he showed a duplicate made by the or-
dinary electrolysis process. As soon as he and Suess
returned to Washington, Berliner set his whole mind
to work on a feasible and practical method for mak-
ing unlimited duplicates from an original disk. He
soon matured a general plan which consisted of
making of an original zinc record a perfect reverse
or matrix by the process of electrotyping. This
showed the record lines raised over the surface of
the disk. The reverse matrix was to be used for
impressing the record lines on some softened mate-
rial like hard rubber and celluloid, exactly as seals
are made by impressing an engraved letter or de-
sign into sealing wax.
Berliner encountered endless difficulties in try-
ing to produce an accurate reverse of an original
zinc record, because unless the matrix, down to its
very surface, was a faithful reproduction, the re-
verse would not be sufficient to answer the demand
for accurate sound copies. It was four years before
Berliner finally succeeded in perfecting matrices
with complete certainty from any zinc record.
In this important work of developing absolute
sound copies in unlimited numbers, Berliner had
the cooperation of Max Levy, of Philadelphia, a
200 EMILE BERLINER
technician of great ability. Levy was the well-
known inventor and first manufacturer of the glass-
ruled screens used all over the world in making
half-tone reproductions of photographs. By 1892
perfect matrices were obtained. It was found that
after the copper surfaces were nickel-plated they
could be impressed without deterioration into hard
rubber, celluloid, or composition previously softened
by heat.
It seemed to all concerned as if the gramophone
with its flat disk duplicate records was now ready
for commercial exploitation. The Berliner Gramo-
phone Company of Philadelphia in fact began to
manufacture small hand-driven machines and asked
Berliner to make in Washington an assortment of
records comprising a sufficiently varied repertoire
to satisfy a small popular demand. Then a serious
hitch occurred. The hard-rubber concern, which
had undertaken to press as many records as might
be demanded from the matrices furnished by Ber-
liner, found that it could not produce records of
even quality. There were flat places here and there,
caused by gases developed by the rubber when
heated, which rendered the whole output unreliable.
At this critical stage Berliner recalled the un-
successful attempt in 1879 of the Bell Company to
utilize an imitation rubber composition for a
cheaper hand telephone. Berliner now approached
a manufacturer of imitation hard rubber and fur-
nished him with a gramophone matrix. Within a
ETCHINO THE HUMAN VOICE 201
week the manufacturer supplied a dozen perfect disk
records. Ever since then, the countless millions of
disk records sold annually throughout the world
have been made from a similar material. The base
of the composition is shellac, which is also the base
of sealing wax, and it is literally correct to say that
a modern disk record is a seal of the human voice.
In the practise worked out by Berliner, and fol-
lowed to this day, a lump of shellac composition
material was softened by heat. It was placed under
a matrix in a power-press. The applied pressure
spread the composition and pressed the lines of the
matrix into it. The matrix and the pressed composi-
tion copy were then chilled. A hard composition
copy was the result.
Thus for the first time in the history of talking
machines ivas solved the problem of snaking un-
limited copies of one original record. Berliner had
laid the foundations of a business of gigantic dimen-
sions.*
*Waldeuiar Kaempffert, one-time editor of the Scientific Amer-
ican and co-author of A Popular History of American Invention,
sajs:
"Although milliong of talking-machine records are in use to-day,
very few of those who derive enjoyment from them realize that the
acoustic principle on which they are based was Emile Berliner 's dis-
covery. In other words, what is known in the trade as the 'lateral
cut' record is his invention,
"The tremendous importance of the lateral cut is demonstrated
by the fact that a large proportion of the flat-disk records which
have been made embody Berliner 's principle. Hence he played a far
larger part than is commonly realized in bringing into millions of
homes music and speech of the finest quality. Whatever the telephone
and the talking machine may have been before Berliner's time, I
think it can not be successfully disputed that he converted them into
the instruments they are to-day. ' '
CHAPTER XXII
GERMANY WELCOMES TUE GRAMOniONE
HAVING eight years earlier revisited the land
of his birth with brow bedecked with tele-
phone laurels, Emile Berliner determined in 1889 to
return to Germany with the latest product of his
inventiveness — the gramophone. lie was still in the
midst of his talliing-machine experiments, but was
convinced of the indisputable soundness of the theo-
ries that underlay them, and did not shrink from
submitting his work to the scrutiny of men with
whom wissenschaftliche Griindliclikcit (scientific
thoroughness) is little short of religion. If the
gramophone passed muster at their exacting hands,
Berliner realized it would bear an invaluable hall-
mark. Germany was already acquainted with the
Bell-Tainter graphophone and the Edison phono-
graph.
Nearly all Europe had become familiar with the
name '* Berliner" on telephone transmitters. Ger-
many, on her part, ever ready to reclaim a native
son who had successfully wooed the goddess of fame,
especially in the scientific realm, was particularly
202
GERMANY WELCOMES GRAMOPHONE 203
fertile soil in which to plant the Berliner conception
of the talking machine.
Berliner took with him from Washington a
varied assortment of original zinc records compris-
ing vocal and instrumental music. His baggage also
included a complete recording outfit and a hand-
driven reproducing machine. The expedition, con-
sisting of the inventor and his young family, made
straight for his native heath at Hanover and laid
plans to remain in Germany a year.
In Hanover Berliner's two brothers were now
operating a large and successful factory for the
manufacture of telephone apparatus. In it facilities
were placed at the inventor's disposal for continued
experimental work on the gramophone, the arrival
of which at once excited the interest of technical
societies in all parts of the country. The society
which had its headquarters at Hanover, one of the
throbbing centers of the newly industrialized Ger-
man Empire, promptly invited the Hannoverkind
(child of Hanover) to address it and exhibit the
gramophone.
Berliner received an enthusiastic welcome. A
professor of the Hanover Institute of Technology,
who was in attendance, complimented him upon his
thoroughly scientific presentation. That was praise
from Sir Hubert; for Geimans of that day were
inclined to \dew with skepticism bordering upon
intolerance the merits of men who laid claim to
scientific attainments without having been educated
204 SMILE BERLINEtl
up to them through the tedious, grinding method of
a specialized academic training. The one-time dry-
goods clerk of Hanover had ''arrived" by a route
that German scientists were not accustomed to
travel. Berliner's career, in their eyes, was wholly
unorthodox.
The fame of the latest talking-machine marvel
from America spread rapidly through the news-
papers. It was not long before the German Imperial
Patent Office, through Berliner's patent attorney
in Berlin, invited him to display and elucidate the
gramophone before its staff of examiners. The ex-
hibition was so successful that the Commissioner of
Patents asked him to repeat it before a group of
distinguished government engineers and scientists.
Among the company invited on that occasion was
the celebrated pianist, Hans von Biilow, whose wife
was a daughter of Herr von Bojanowski, the Com-
missioner of Patents. Von Biilow was fascinated by
a piano record which Berliner had made at Wash-
ington with conspicuous success. Before the assem-
bled dignitaries of science and the official world, von
Biilow predicted a brilliant future for the gramo-
phone. Its possibilities in the realm of Apollo, of
course, particularly stirred the imagination of the
German virtuoso.
It was during Berliner's sojourn in Berlin that
the Electro-Technical Society of the Imperial capi-
tal, comprising the aristocracy of German scientific
brains, invited him to attend its regular meeting on
GERMANY WELCOMES GRAMOPHONE 205
November 26, 1889. One of the announced features
of the program was an exhibition and demonstra-
tion of Edison's phonograph. The secretary of the
society, having learned of Berliner's presence in the
city, invited him to attend the meeting, and, if he
desired, to acquaint the membership with the gramo-
phone.
Berliner readily availed himself of this flatter-
ing opportunity. No one who has not personally
brushed shoulders with the intellectual superiority
which Prussian kiiltur, especially of the scientific
brand, has since time immemorial arrogated to it-
self, can adequately grasp what it meant for the
technically uneducated young Washington inventor
to address so exclusive and discriminating an au-
dience as Berliner was about to face. They were
the elite of German science, expert in their various
lines, and, with regard to anything new under the
scientific sun, were what we unregenerate Ameri-
cans to-day would call '^hard boiled." Also, to
venture still further into the Yankee vernacular,
they were men who required very decidedly to be
*' shown" before they could be convinced.
Berliner was commensurately conscious that he
confronted an ordeal. Uneifaceable in his memory
remains the recollection of the awe-inspiring pres-
ence in which he eventually found himself that rainy
midwinter night in Berlin thirty-seven years ago.
On the rostrum, resplendent in his regimentals, sat
the president of the society, Lieutenant-General
206 EMILE BEBLINER
Golz of the Prussian Army. Other officers in uni-
form, who traditionally lent distinction to any kind
of a function in Prussia, were present in numbers,
for the German Army, even in those pre-Armaged-
don days, elevated science to a high place in the
war scheme.
Addressing the Carnegie Peace Endowment's
round-table on disarmament at Briarcliff Manor in
May, 192G, Doctor Edwin E. Slosson, Director of
Science Service and author of Creative Chemistry,
said: "That Germany was able to hold out so long
against encircling enemies was due less to Hinden-
burg than to Fritz Haber, who discovered how to
extract nitrogen for explosives from the air and
thus blow over the blockade. War has been vir-
tually a branch of applied chemistry ever since the
invention of gunpowder, or even from the first forg-
ing of the steel sword from the ore."
From his unobtrusive seat in the audience of five
hundred Berliner observed the Edison cylinder
phonograph on the platform, which, during the
course of the evening, was explained, exhibited and
made to perform. The regular program having
been carried out, a soldier-member of the Electro-
Technical Society arose and informed the meeting
that Emile Berliner, "from America," was present
and had consented to present the type of talking
machine that he had invented. To the accompani-
ment of courteous applause and amid the liveliest
interest, Berliner took the platform for some pre-
GERMANY WELCOMES GRAMOPHONE 207
liminarj^ observations before introducing the gramo-
phone. He had carefully prepared his remarks in
German, because, though commanding the language
with fluency, he was less proficient with its technical
lingo than he had become with English scientific
terminology through his inventive career at Wash-
ington.
"To me has come the unexpected honor," he
said, ''of being asked to explain the gramophone
before this society and give an exhibition of both
its recording and reproducing processes. Although
at the moment I am only inadequately prepared, I
hope that it will not be difficult for me, even ^^^ith-
out holding demonstrating experiments, for which
I lack the proper apparatus in Berlin, to elucidate
those few points which will contribute to an under-
standing of the mechanical and chemical processes
underlying the gramophone."
Then, in the course of a terse, modest, fifteen-
minute address, which made an unmistakably deep
impression on his audience, Berliner traced, step
by step, the genesis of the gramophone and of the
lateral cut disk record. ''In conclusion," he said,
"I believe I am justified in saying, not only on the
basis of actual experiments, but from the standpoint
of fundamental principles of physics, that the pho-
nograph already has reached the limits of its tech-
nical possibilities, while the gramophone, on the
other hand, has only begun to tread the new paths
of its immeasurable development. I leave it to your
208 EMILE BERLINER
judgment to determine whether this opinion is a
tenable one."
Berliner, Avith that final passage, deliberately
threw down the gauntlet to the Edison phonograph
in the supreme court of German science and in terms
that lacked nothing of confident and frank avowal.
When the inventor of the gramophone finished
his address, a volley of applause indicated that his
arguments had not failed to carry conviction to most
of the assembled engineers and technicians. Then
came a dramatic interlude.
Privy Government Councilor Doctor Werner von
Siemens, the celebrated electrical engineer and
founder of the world-famed Siemens-Halske and
Siemens-Schuckert electrical concerns, asked for the
floor. He said that "it was certainly extremely in-
teresting" to them all to see these two American
inventions, the phonograph and the gramoi3hone, in
action, cheek by jowl. He had himself, he explained,
never seen or heard the gramophone before. **It is
extraordinarily important and interesting," von
Siemens pointed out, that Berliner had evolved a
system of recording that "made it possible, if not
even probable" that the gramophone, when thor-
oughly worked out, would reproduce the tones of
speech more clearly than the phonograph repro-
duced them. "The gramophone," continued von
Siemens, "has in addition the great advantage of
utilizing a record etched in zinc and therefore in
more durable material than a wax cylinder. The
GERMANY WELCOMES GRAMOPHONE 209
gramophone will in consequence deteriorate less
through use and better resist the teeth of time."
Having paid this ungrudging tribute to the
superior merits of the gramophone, Doctor von
Siemens then said that he felt called upon to make
what he termed ''some passing honorable mention
(eine hleine Ehrenerhldrung) of the apparatus of
my friend Edison." Von Siemens proceeded:
''Herr Berliner told us a few minutes ago that the
phonograph can not reproduce the voice in natural
tones because the depth of the recorded impression
is not proportional to the voice pressure. . . . "VVe
have, as a matter of fact, to-night heard the pho-
nograph reproduce the voice completely and with
wonderful clearness. I think it is appropriate to
call attention to this essential purity of the Edison
phonograph. ' '
''Herr Ingenieur" Berliner was immediately
recognized by the chairman for the purpose of a
brief rejoinder to Doctor von Siemens. *'In my
short address," he said, ''the reference to the pho-
nograph's reproducing qualities applied only to loud
reproduction. I did not say that the phonograph
does not reproduce naturally, but that when it re-
produces loudly, its tones are not natural. I merely
wished to stress that point."
Berliner's story of the gramophone later was
published in full in the official organ of the Berlin
Electro-Technical Society. To this day it remains a
standard contribution to German scientific litera-
210 EMILE BERLINER
ture and part of the official history of the talking
machine.
Some eight or ten weeks after the Electro-Tech-
nical Society affair, word was cabled to the United
States that an Edison-Berliner ''competition" had
taken place in the German capital. The New York
World received through "Dunlap's Cable News
Service" and x^ublished on February 5, 1890, under
the caption "Phonograph vs. Gramophone," the
f ollomng despatch :
''Berlin, Feb. 4 — Edison's phonograph and Ber-
liner's gramophone were put in competition to-day.
Berliner, who is an American citizen, was declared
the victor. Siemens, the electrician, and a crowd of
distinguished people attended."
The despatch made a profound impression in the
United States. Next day's New York World, in an
editorial note, said :
"The statement cabled to The World that in a
competition in Berlin between Edison's phonograph
and Berliner's gramophone the latter was declared
the victor created considerable excitement in elec-
trical circles. Neither instrument embodies any
electrical principle, both having purely mechanical
contrivances, but both of the inventors are well
known in electrical circles, and hence the interest,
which is intense, has been fired by the fact that but
few people were aware that Berliner had entered
into competition mth Edison in the latter 's favorite
invention. It is a fact, however, that Berliner pat-
ented his gramophone several years ago, and it was
exhibited in this city, Washington, Boston and else-
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where and attracted attention, but was not con-
sidered a serious, rival to the phonograph, owing to
its being more complicated and cumbersome."
The Evening JVorld of February 5, 1890, under
the head-lines "Edison Has a New Rival — Ber-
liner's Gramophone Awarded a Victory over the
Phonograph," said:
'*A despatch from Berlin conveys the intelli-
gence that Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the
phonograph, has been beaten in competition in that
city by a man named Berliner, with a talking ma-
chine called the gramophone. The sad intelligence
is in a manner softened, however, by the fact that
Berliner is an American citizen, and is a resident
of Washington. ' '
^to"
A signal honor was now to be vouchsafed the
young American inventor. The proceedings be-
fore the Electro-Technical Society of Berlin having
been broadcast throughout the German scientific
world, they attracted the attention of Herman von
Helmholtz, the world-famed professor of physics at
the University of Berlin, projector of the theory of
the conservation of energy, and the first exponent
of the meaning of color both in vision and in music
and speech. Excellenz von Helmholtz was then di-
rector of the Physical Institute of the University.
Michael Pupin, author of From Immigrant to
Inventor, whose eminent career in American science
is not unlike that of Emile Berliner, was a student
of von Helmholtz in experimental physics a year or
212 EMILE BERLINER
two before Berliner's arrival in Berlin. "Von
Helmlioltz's title," writes Pupin, ''conferred upon
him by the old Emperor ("William I), was Excellens,
and the whole teaching staff of the institute stood
in awe when the name of Excellenz was mentioned.
The whole scientific world of Germany, nay, the
whole intellectual world of Germany, stood in awe
when the name of Excellenz von Helmholtz was pro-
nounced. Next to Bismarck and the old Kaiser, he
was at that time the most illustrious man in the Ger-
man Empire."
On the morning of January 7, 1890, six weeks
after the "phonograph-gramophone" episode at the
Electro-Technical Society, Berliner received at the
Hotel Kaiserhof, his Berlin stopping-place, the fol-
lowing handwritten letter (in German) :
" Charlottenburg, 6. Januar 1890.
" Marsch-strasse.
' ' Imperial Physical Institute.
"Dear Sir;
"I would certainly be very grateful to you if you
would give me opportunity to become acquainted
with the workings of the gramophone. I could not
find the time yesterday for the somewhat long jour-
ney to the Belle Alliance Theater [where there had
been a gramophone demonstration]. If it is agree-
able to you to repeat the experiments in the Hotel
Kaiserhof, I will come there the day after to-mor-
row at one-fifteen o'clock p. m., as I happen to be
going to the city that day. May I bring those of my
assistants who have concerned themselves with the
phonograph ?
"Should you prefer to hold the demonstration
in rooms that are fitted up for experiments, rather
GERMANY WELCOMES GRAMOPHONE 213
than in hotel rooms, this can take place in a room of
Division No. 2 of the Imperial Phj'sical Institute
(Charlottenburg, Berliner-strasse 151) perhaps on
Thursday.
*'In that case, I would only ask you to be good
enough to notify the director of that division. Doctor
Loewenberg, just exactly what you will be bringing
along with you.
"Yours sincerelv,
"H. vonHeimholtz."
"Herr Emile Berliner,
"City.
Berliner informed Excellent von Hehnholtz that
the former's living quarters at the Kaiserhof — the
capacious hostelry on the Wilhelms Platz that in its
day housed generations of American tourists —
would adequately serve the purpose. One of Ber-
liner's rooms was commodious and was filled, for the
occasion of von Hehnholtz 's visit, with extra chairs.
A few minutes after one o'clock on Wednesday,
January eighth, there came a knock at Berliner's
door. "Herr Ingenieur Berliner?" inquired one of
two men who stood at the threshold, clicking heels
and standing in salute, German military fashion, as
the American received from their hands cards at-
testing that they were assistants to Excellenz Pro-
fessor Doctor von Helmholtz. Berliner welcomed
them, and asked them to be seated. There was an-
other rap on the door. Three more men clicked
heels, saluted and presented cards. They, too, were
assistants to von Helmholtz. Then ensued a succes-
sion of knocks, chcked-heels, salutes and visiting
214 EMILE BERLINER
cards, all identifying their bearers as Helmholtzian
lieutenants. Evidently the eminent physicist had
decided to mobilize his entire scientific staff at Ber-
liner's gramophone soiree.
Within a few minutes every chair was occupied
and standing-room only available. Berliner counted
an audience of thirty. As there was hardly space
enough for demonstrating purposes, he asked the
hotel to open up an adjoining parlor to accommodate
the overflow. Presently von Helmholtz himself,
accompanied by his chief assistant, arrived, prompt-
ly at the appointed hour of one-fifteen o'clock.
Berliner accounts their meeting one of the red-
letter events of his life. It was a triumphant mo-
ment for him and one that was significantly rich in
contrast — the world-celebrated, profoundly trained
university man of science, the colossus of his pro-
fession, in democratic contact on the common
ground of inventive genius mth a self-taught, self-
made man of science, who had scaled the Olympian
heights with no equipment except that which intui-
tion breeds and preseverance develops.
Von Helmholtz was on the verge of his seventieth
year. He had an enormous head. His face was
deeply furrowed and distended veins stood out upon
a massive brow, beneath which a pair of protruding,
penetrating eyes betokened the restless searcher for
the scientifically unknown. His whole mien was
that of a profound thinker; and his entire appear-
ance, compellingly striking. No one could possibly
GERMANY WELCOMES GRAMOPHONE 215
mistake liim for anything but a giant in the domain
of learning. Von Helmholtz was partly Anglo-
Saxon, his mother having been a lineal descendant
of William Penn. Pupin records an aphorism of
Helmholtz that has been one of the keynotes of
Emile Berliner's life: "A few experiments success-
fully carried out usually lead to results more im-
portant than all mathematical theories."
The great physicist was cordial, gracious, nat-
ural and interested. He greeted Berliner with a
kindly warmth that completely disarmed the young
inventor of any semblance of stage fright in the
presence of so eminent a personage.
Helmholtz and his staff of assistants were so de-
lighted with the exhibition of the gramophone that
they urged the American to visit the Imperial Phy-
sical Institute and make some gramophone records
in the well-equipped laboratories there. Berliner re-
luctantly had to decline the invitation because at the
time he was without recording apparatus.
Not long after the visit from von Helmholtz,
Berliner appeared before the Technical Society of
Frankfort-on-the-Main, the same organization to
which Philip Reis belonged and before which the
latter had many years previous exhibited his famous
conception of the Frenchman Bourseuil's telephone.
German science having bestowed its august
blessing upon the Berliner gramophone, German in-
dustry now turned its attention in that direction.
The very first concern in the world to reveal com-
216 EMILE BERLINER
mereial interest in the gramophone was a doll fac-
tory in the Thuringian Forest, that mountainous
wood in northern Germany whence the toys of the
world once came almost exclusively and amid the
romantic heights of which stands the Wartburg —
the castle in which Martin Luther sought refuge and
threw his famous inkpot at the Devil, and the arena
of the traditional Sdngerkreig immortalized by
Wagner in Die Meister singer.
The Thuringian dollmakers said that if this mir-
acle-worker aus Amerika could make a zinc plate
talk, they didn 't see why he couldn 't make their wax
dolls talk. Berliner was not minded to branch into
the special researches and experiments which their
proposals would have entailed. But he arranged
with the firm to make for them tiny gramophones
for which records only five inches in diameter were
pressed in celluloid. Those miniature talking ma-
chines, the outgrowth of a suggestion from the
haunts of Kris Kringle, were the earliest gramo-
phones placed on the market for public sale. The
first pressed copy of a gramophone record, pro-
duced by Berliner in the course of his pioneer ex-
periments, was made in celluloid in 1888 and is still
on exhibition at the National Museum, Washington.
In the autumn of 1890, the gramophone having
made a triumphal debut in Europe, Emile Berliner
returned to the United States, to devote himself in-
tensively to the working out of details that would
perfect the machine to a point whereby its popular
appeal to the American public would be irresistible.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE WOKLD SET TO MUSIC
THE sun never sets on the British Empire nor
Emile Berliner's talking machine. To-day the
gramophone sings and plays in forty languages. It
has literally set the world to music. It is manu-
factured in nearly a dozen different countries.
Everywhere, except in the United States, the talk-
ing machine which Berliner invented is known as
the gramophone. Out of it has grown one of Ameri-
ca's mighty industries. The gramophone does not
represent the first attempt at a talking machine, as
is disclosed by the account of its genesis in preced-
ing chapters. But it turned out to be scientifically
the most perfect machine and indisputably the most
commercially successful product of its kind ever
placed on the market.
Emile Berliner's love of music is inherent and
inherited. Nurtured in childhood at Hanover by
his mother, it was mainly that which inspired him
to work out a machine which would essentially
be a music-making machine. As a young man,
Berliner studied music, and became something more
than a proficient amateur at the piano and violin.
217
218 EMILE BERLINER
He still plays both of those instruments. He has
always had a sound theoretical knowledge of music,
and it served him effectively throughout his many
years of acoustic experiment and achievement. In
earlier life he sang. When Leopold Damrosch
founded the New York Oratorio Society in the be-
ginning of the 'seventies, young Berliner became one
of its members and was a baritone in The Messiah,
Elijah and Sams,on.
Berliner has been a composer, as well as an in-
terpreter, of music. One of his patriotic composi-
tions, The Columbian Anthem, was first heard at the
national council of the Daughters of the American
Revolution in Washington on Washington's Birth-
day, 1897. On Flag Day of the same year The Co-
lumbian Anthem was presented, with full chorus
and orchestra, by the Castle Square Opera Com-
pany at the LaFayette Square Opera House in
Washington, and sung in a number of public schools
at the National Capital and at New York. On Sep-
tember 18, 1897, the United States Marine Band,
under the famous conductor Professor Fanciulli,
played Berliner's anthem as the opening number
of the program at a garden party of the President
and Mrs. McKinley in the White House grounds.
The Baltimore American, commenting on the
White House concert, said:
''Considering that this country has not a na-
tional melody other than those borrowed from Eu-
rope, the Columbian Anthem of Emile Berliner has
THE WQELD SET TO MUSIC 219
a good chance some day to be selected as our na-
tional inelod}^ It is remarkable for its stately dig-
nity and lias within it that patriotic stir and catchi-
ness bound to make it popular. It is short, like the
English, Eussian and Austrian hymns, and as a
composition ranks easily with the best national
hymns ever written."
The Columbian Anthem was sung for several
years in the Washington public schools. It was not
unusual for Berliner to hear schoolboys in the
streets whistling or humming his song, which was
alike an expression of his musical soul and a deep
reverence for the land of his adoption.
As passion for experiment is embedded in Emile
Berliner's marrow, his fondness for the violin once
led him into a quest for the mystery that gives an
old instrument, like a Stradivarius, a more brilliant
tone than a newer violin. He finally concluded that
the solution would have to be found in a considera-
tion of the uneven pressures to which the adjust-
ment of the strings subjects the violin box. Berliner
reasoned that a new violin box did not vibrate freely
because of the irregular construction caused by the
base bar and the sound-post, and of the fact that the
four strings exerted uneven pressures on the fibers
of the wood. In addition, the tension of the strings
acted with a crushing pressure on the two ^'feet" of
the bridge, one of them pressing lightly, the other
hard and firmly. As a consequence, the fibers of the
wood were hampered and could not give out the full
volume of their resonance. Now, argued Berliner,
220 EMILE BERLINER
as a violin ages and is much played upon, the fibers
of the wood gradually adjust themselves to the un-
even pressures of the strings so that eventually the
fibers are not compressed and give forth freer and
more even tones.
To prove this theory Berliner worked out a
method of stringing which would carry the pressure
through the center of the violin from the finger
board to the end where the string holder is usually
attached, but he abandoned the string holder itself.
The consequence was that new violins thus strung
had the same evenness and freedom of tones as long-
used violins. Berliner furnished a number of such
instruments to artists, who were surprised at the
resultant effects. Among them were Leopold Dam-
rosch and Camilla Urso. Berliner's ideas never
attained general adoption mainly for the reason that
violinists were inclined to look upon any radical de-
parture in the stringing of the violin as heresy, even
though they recognized the ingenuity and the effec-
tiveness of Berliner's devices.
The monumental plant of the Victor Company at
Camden, New Jersey, is the direct outgrowth of the
Berliner Gramophone Company founded by Ber-
liner at Philadelphia in 1892. In an Important Let-
ter to the Trade, issued by the Victor Talking Ma-
chine Company on November 8, 1909, in connection
with ''Victrola Infringement," these statements
occur :
THE WOELD SET TO MUSIC 221
"The manufacture and sale of the Gramophone
was first conducted by the United States Gramo-
phone Company, followed by the Berliner Gramo-
phone Company and then by the Victor Talking-
Machine Company, which latter company acquired
its rights from the former companies.
"We now control the original Berliner basic
patents, and we have the Gramophone developed
to its present condition. Through our efforts and
improvements the Gramophone has become an im-
portant factor in the market, in spite of the general
opinion among talking-machine manufacturers, at
the time of its advent, that it was destined to remain
nothing more than a toy."
Just as the Bell Telephone Company j^ears be-
fore had been compelled to defend, as they trium-
phantly did, the validity and inviolability of the
Berliner telephone patents, so the Victor Talking
Machine Company for many years was called upon
to take up legal arms to protect Berliner's talking-
machine inventions and rights. "We have met
infringement and unfair competition very success-
fully," said the trade circular above quoted; and,
speaking of "the latest attack," it added: "We are
obliged again to enter the legal arena, in which we
believe to exist little doubt of our prompt and deci-
sive victory." Subsequent events justified that con-
fidence. The Berliner basic patents in connection
mth the talking machine have proved as attack-
proof as the Berliner basic patents in connection
with the telephone.
There is a wide-spread but wholly unfounded
impression that radio, especially the broadcasting of
222 EMILE BERLINER
music, dealt the talking machine a knock-out blow.
It is entirely true that in the early months and years
of radio's vast popularity, in 1923 and 1924, the
Bale of machines and records fell off seriously. But
the industry in the meantime has more than re-
covered its equilibrium and old-time prosperity. At
the annual stockholders meeting of the Victor Talk-
ing Machine Company in April, 1926, its astute
president, Eldridge R. Johnson, was able to report
that there was more than thirty million dollars'
worth of orders for apparatus and records on the
company's books and that the manufacture of one
hundred thousand records a day was required to
keep up with the demand. Radio, it would appear,
has, therefore, not put the talking machine out of
business. They have, on the contrary, become part-
ners in the eternal and correspondingly lucrative
industry of providing happiness, entertainment and
education to humankind.
In the United States alone, including the English
language, talking-machine records are now being
''published" in no fewer than forty tongues. To
catalogue them is virtually to tabulate the civilized
races of the world:
Albanian
Chinese
English
Arabian-Syrian
Croatian
Finnish
Armenian
Cuban
French
Bohemian
Danish
French-Canadian
Bulgarian
Dutch
German
THE WORLD SET TO MUSIC
223
Greek
Lithuanian
Serbian
Hawaiian
Mexican
Slovak
Hebrew- Yiddish
Norwegian
Slovenian
Hungarian
Polish
Spanish
Italian
Porto Rican
Swedish
Latin
Portuguese
Swiss
Japanese
Roumanian
Turkish
Korean
Russian
Ukrainian
Welsh
In some foreign languages, such as Hebrew- Yid-
dish and Italian, more than six hundred records
have been made. There are more than thirteen hun-
dred Chinese records, shipped principally to China,
although there is a considerable trade in Cantonese
records in the United States.
In addition to the present Victor plant at Cam-
den, there are nine factories in the world turning
out talking-machine apparatus of the Berliner
gramophone basic pattern. The largest of them,
outside of the United States, is the works of the
Gramophone Company, Ltd., at Hayes, Middlesex,
England, which Berliner was mainly instrumental
in founding in 1899. Until 1923, the Victor Talking
Machine Company of Canada, at Montreal, was
knowai as the Berliner Gramophone Company, after
the name of its organizer.
The British Gramophone Company, which has an
invested capital of twelve and one-half million dol-
lars, operates in Europe, Africa, Australia, New
224 EMILE BERLINER
Zealand and parts of Asia through subsidiary com-
panies, branches and distributors. Branch factories
are situated at Aussig, Czechoslovakia; Nogent-sur-
Marne, France; Calcutta, India; Barcelona, Spain;
Sydney, Australia ; Milan, Italy, and Nowawes, Ger-
many.
Alfred Clark, who grew up in the gramophone
industry as a lad in the United States, became the
managing director of the English plant early in the
present century. During the World War, when all
of industrial Britain was converted into an arsenal,
the first factory to be turned completely and eifec-
tively into a shell-making works was Clark's gramo-
phone plant at Hayes. It was also, under his
direction, the first British works to employ girls and
women on a large scale in the manufacture of muni-
tions of war. The vast park of fine machine tools
used in the construction of gramophones and rec-
ords was swiftly and steadily displaced by lathes
and the other implements required for production
of shells.
It was the relentless rain of British shells that
kept the enemy at bay on the western front through
the first two and a half terrible years of the war;
and it was the ingenuity and industry of British
manufactories, like the Gramophone Company in
Middlesex, that did yeoman service in sustaining the
Allies' defense. Emile Berliner is essentially a
man of peace. In the wildest flights of his imagina-
tion he could never have dreamed that a factory
THE WORLD SET TO MUSIC 225
built for the production of his talking machine one
day would be producing, on a twenty-four-hour
shift, ammunition to be hurled across French battle-
fields at German troops.
It has been said in an imaginative figure of
speech that music won the World War. Music may
not have decided the fate of Civilization on the shell-
plowed fields of France, but Song was a mighty fac-
tor in sustaining that morale mthout which victory
might not have been achieved. Certain it is that the
gramophone and the disk record were the unfailing
companions of the poilu, the '^ Tommy" and the
doughboy. Often they were all that made life still
worth living in mud-soaked trench and dripping
dug-out. Foch's invincibles before Verdun and the
Marne reeled off Madelon and the Marseillaise on
*It was the Gramophone Company in Great Britain that made
world-famous the dog which for more than a quarter of a century
has been listening to "His Master's Voice." Collier's Weekly, in
May, 1909, remarked that "the design has become a household word,
and the quaint little fox terrier at attention before the horn is
familiar to more Americans than any other of the world's greatest
masterpieces." From a brother Francis Barraud, an English painter,
inherited a faithful fox terrier named "Nipper." Man and dog be-
came fast friends and one day in 1899 it occurred to the artist, an
early addict to the talking machine, to depict ' ' Nipper ' ' on canvas
in the terrier's favorite posture in front of the horn. "Nipper"
was accustomed to listen as intently to the sounds that oozed from
the horn as any human. Eventually the painting became the posses-
sion of the Gramophone Company. The original now hangs in a
special recess over the fireplace in the oak-paneled board room of the
company's head office in Middlesex. Later Barraud painted many
copies of the picture, and these now occupy honored positions in
various gramophone centers throughout the world.
Emile Berliner, being a painter, in addition to his many other
artistic accomplishments, realized the gripping appeal and correspond-
ingly big commercial possibilities of "His Master's Voice" for the
talking-machine industry. He therefore secured trademark copyrights
in Barraud 's ' * Nipper. ' ' Eventually the gramophone companies all
over the world adopted it as their distinctive symbol.
226 EMILE BERLINER
gramophone records when they were not marching
into battle with those soul-stirring ballads on their
lips.
Wellington declared that Waterloo was won on
the playing fields of Eton. Historians may record
that the British Army's victories in France and
Belgium between 1914 and 1918 were won by
the meii who wrote Tipperary, There's a Long,
Long Trail and Keep the Home Fires Burning, and
by the men who made it possible for those inspiring
melodies to be dinned at psychological moments into
the ears of the men of England, Scotland, Ireland,
Wales and the "dominions overseas," who bared
their breasts to the foe at Mons, the Somme and
Soissons.
How long it would have been before it was
''over, over there," without George M. Cohan's
haunting lyric of the American war spirit is a grave
question. Troops nowadays do not tramp into battle
behind a brass band. They turn on their talking
machines while waiting, in soul-trying impatience
and uncertainty, for the zero hour which sends them
over the top. In France our men thanked God on
innumerable occasions for the gramophone and for
the blessings of song and reminders of home that
it never failed to bring. To-day, thousands of
maimed World War soldiers condemned to existence
in hospitals derive their chief solace from the boons
with which history will link the name of Emile Ber-
liner— the talking machine and the microphone, soul
of radio.
THE WORLD SET TO MUSIC 227
Berliner's lateral cut disk record, with its possi-
bility of unlimited duplication, is the seed from
which the whole modern talking-machine industry
has sprouted. Since his basic patents ran out in
1912, all but two companies now manufacturing
talking machines have used the fundamental prin-
ciples of the gramophone. The John McCormacks,
the Galli-Curcis, the Geraldine Farrars, the Louise
Homers, the Schumann-Heinks, the Jeritzas and all
the other songbirds, who, through the medium of the
talking machine, turn our homes into opera-houses,
long since refused to record for machines of
non-gramophone type because their form of sound
grooves distorts the voice. Emile Berliner's pre-
diction before the Franklin Institute in 1888 that
the world's great singers some day would receive
rich royalties from the sale of their records long
since came true. Their returns from concerts to
invisible audiences probably far outstrip their ac-
tual box-office receipts. They have Emile Berliner
to thank for that. In connection with accounting
proceedings instituted in the New Jersey courts in
June, 1926, by Gloria Caruso, six-year-old daughter
of Enrico Caruso, it was stated that the great
tenor's ''record" royalties between 1921 and 1925
amounted to one million dollars.
The modern commercial success of the gramo-
phone talking machine, though resting securely
upon Berliner's invention, is attributable in very
large degree to the supplementary work of Eldridge
228 EMILE BERLINER
R, Johnson, now President of the Victor Talking
Machine Company. An able mechanician of shrewd
technical perception, Johnson succeeded in develop-
ing a motor-driven reproducing machine which ran
with great regularity of speed, was readily adjust-
able, and, last but not least, ran silently, so as not
to disturb the sounds of the record by its own noise.
Such a motor machine had been made by a New York
clockmaker as far back as 1891, but was not quite
noiseless. Johnson also took note of the fact that
the patents of Bell and Tainter covering the method
of cutting a sound record in wax were approaching
their final term of legal existence. Deciding to take
advantage of that circumstance, he applied himself
to the elimination of the difficult etching process
and to combining the much easier wax-cutting tech-
nique of the graphophone with the gramophone
method of horizontal recording.
Tho new gramophone, which was evolved, in-
stantly appealed to grand-opera stars, to the great
masters of the piano, to the wizards of the violin,
to symphony orchestras, to artists on every kind
of musical instrument, and to celebrated actors and
elocutionists. Its repertoire soon ran the whole
gamut of audible phenomena. Voice reproductions
in particular became so startlingly perfect that
hotels and restaurants found it possible to have
their orchestras accompany singers as they emerged
by proxy from the horn of the talking machine.
Presently there arose a moot question as to
THE WORLD SET TO MUSIC 229
whether the word "gramophone" could be patented
as a trade name. In order to forestall any future
difficulties Mr. Johnson coined the name ''Victor
Talking Machine" as a trade-mark.
The creators of the present Victor plant at Cam-
den, by far the largest talking-machine factory in
the world, have contrived, in respect of internal
beauty and atmosphere, almost entirely to divest it
of the character of an industrial establishment.
They have breathed into it, instead, a spirit in tune
with Orpheus and Apollo. Some thirteen thousand
men and women are employed there in the produc-
tion of everything that goes into the talking ma-
chine. In the expansive buildings devoted to the
making of cabinets there is an omnipresent odor of
fine woods. Artisans, apparently joyous in their
jobs, hum music over their work-benches. There is
visible and audible happiness rampant in the Cam-
den staff that strikes all \isitors to the plant as
being in peculiar harmony with the daily task to
which it is devoting itself — the mass production of
instruments of melody.
Earlier in this narrative are some facts and
figures that tell the story of the physical growth of
the telephone. No less impressive are a few graphic
details that reveal the present magnitude of the
talking-machine industry.
The pressure required to press a twelve-inch
record is two hundred and fifty-four thousand two
hundred and fifty pounds — the equivalent of pres-
230 EMILE BERLINER
sure at the bottom of a column of east iron twelve
inches in diameter and approximately as high as the
Woolworth Building. It would take a string of
freight cars twenty-six and three-quarter miles long
to haul the Victor yearly output. At the Camden
plant six hundred and thirty-seven thousand square
feet of blue-print paper are used in one year —
enough to make a single print over an eighth of a
mile square. Each day, for cooling presses, two mil-
lion seven hundred thousand gallons of water are
pumped, enough to fill a two-foot diameter pipe
twenty-two miles long. Daily one hundred and eighty
tons of coal are burned. They would last the average
home-owner twenty-five years. If the present floor
areas of the vast talking-machine plant on the Dela-
ware were laid out in a building one hundred feet
wide (one story high), the building would be three
and six-tenths miles long. Between May and October,
1923, sufficient lumber was cut up at Camden to
build six hundred two-story houses, each twenty-
eight feet square, and enough packing material was
used to make a two-car garage for each of them.
The monthly production of records piled flat would
make a column four miles high — twice as high as the
F5 sea-plane can fly and fifty per cent, higher than
Mount Whitney, the loftiest peak in the United
States. Edge to edge, the same records would reach
five hundred and twenty miles, or the distance from
Camden to Cincinnati. It would take nineteen years*
continuous gramophone playing to play them I
THE WORLD SET TO MUSIC 231
Two institutions of world-wide fame — the Li-
brary of Congress at Washington and the Grand
Opera in Paris — have given substance to an early
prophecy of Emile Berliner. He said that one of
the missions of the gramophone record was to per-
petuate, for eternity, the voices of celebrities, or
voices near and dear to particular persons. In 1925
the Congressional Library decided to install a com-
prehensive collection of talking-machine records.
As an addition to the music division of the Library,
the collection is intended to give students of music
an opportunity to hear the works of the great com-
posers, as performed by master artists, instead of
merely tracing them mentally from books and notes.
The collection contains a large number of records
made by artists now passed from the scene and is
the first seriously conceived public aggregation of
its kind in America.
Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress, said :
*'The records add greatly to the resources of our
music division and to the Library's auditorium for
chamber concerts, and aid in giving pleasure and in-
struction to a highly significant public." Carl
Engel, Chief of the Music Division, added: '*I have
been moved especially by the thought of the coming
generations. To them this extension of the resources
of the music division — adding to the printed record
of a composition the record of its sound in per-
formance— will be invaluable. With my pleasure
and satisfaction there mingles only the regret that
232 EMILE BEELINER
this wonderful invention was not made three hun-
dred years ago."
Some time before the Library of Congress ar-
ranged to install its record collection, the Paris
Opera placed in hermetically sealed vaults an as-
sortment of records which are not to be touched for
fifty or a hundred years, and then only for compari-
son with records made by artists still to come. Down
in the catacomb-like fire-proof storerooms built by
the big talking-machine companies here and in
Europe, and securely barred to all but a few trusted
employees, are stored away hundreds upon hun-
dreds of copper and steel matrices, the indestruc-
tible and precious legacies which the masters of song
and performance have bequeathed to future genera-
tions. Their immortality is secure.
In a paper on the Bell-Tainter graphophone,
read by Henry Edmunds before the British Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science at Bath on
September 7, 1888, there is a story of a young
Chinese diplomat at Washington. On seeing the
Bell-Tainter graphophone for the first time, he re-
called a famous legend in China about a fair woman
whose voice was so beautiful that her children
longed to preserve it for future generations to hear.
So they persuaded her to speak into a bamboo cane
which was carefully sealed. The cane was sacredly
cherished for several generations and then, one day,
was opened. Each word came out in order and with
all the original sweetness. But the voice was never
heard again. It had vanished for all time.
THE WORLD SET TO MUSIC 233
What filial piety once in far Cathay quaintly es-
sayed to achieve by magic has become a practical
possibility in our day because of what Emile Ber-
liner wrought. He made it possible for posterity to
hold communion with the immortals.* Enrico Caruso
no longer bestrides the boards of the Metropolitan
Opera, but his majestic song is with us yet. Mankind
has realized at last Tennyson's msh for 'Hhe voice
that is still."
*A certain Colonel Joyce^ speaking into the graphophone at
Washington in July, 1888, recited the following verse of his own
composition in tribute to Berliner 's invention :
"I treasure the voices of poets and sages,
I keep them alive through the round rolling years;
I speak to the world for ages and ages,
Eecording the language of smiles and of tears.
"When friends have departed, and sweet life has ended,
Their voices shall sound through my swift rolling heart;
While all of their love-notes are treasured and blended,
As faithful and true as the nature of art.
"The pulpit, the bar, the wants of the household.
Shall photograph thought in the sigh of my soul ;
The man and the maid shall advance more than tenfold,
Who talk with my tongue as the years grandly roll.
"The Godhead alone shall be found in my preaching^
And marvelous secrets I yet shall disclose.
The schools of the world shall list to my teaching,
As pure and as bright as the blush of the rose.
"I war with the world where ignorance slumbers,
And go hand in hand with the light of the sua.
I count every thought with quick magical numbers;
And my work on the earth shall never be done.''
CHAPTER XXIV
Berliner's contribution to public health
IN THE prefatory words by Herbert Hoover,
statesman and humanitarian, with which this
story of inventive genius begins, it is set forth that
Emile Berliner ''has crowned his material success
by the capstone of a wise and notable philanthropy. ' '
In the realm of human beneficence, Berliner,
serenely across the threshold of his seventy-fifth
year, is still active. As he is a fundamentalist in all
things, it is to the cause of child health, which is
the foundation of citizenship and national welfare,
that the inventor of the microphone and the gramo-
phone has devoted himself. He has done so not as
a theorist, but as a practical idealist. As the years
have failed to wither the infinite variety of his scien-
tific activities, neither have they staled his zeal in
humanitarian works, for it is more than a quarter of
a century since he first enlisted in the war against
infant mortality.
During the interval he has become one of its
recognized field-marshals. The death rate among
babies in the District of Columbia, when Berliner
took up arms against it, was so appalling that, in
234
PUBLIC HEALTH 235
the words of a distinguished Washington professor
of hygiene, Doctor George M. Kober, hot weather
saw them ''die like flies." Li the late 'nineties,
nearly three hundred children out of every thousand
born in Washington perished before the completion
of their first year, principally from gastro-intestinal
troubles, or an average of approximately thirty per
cent. During the fiscal year ended June 30, 1925,
out of nine thousand, two hundred and seventy-
seven babies born in the District of Columbia, only
one hundred and thirteen died from intestinal com-
plaints, or an average of less than one and one-
fourth per cent. Authorities like Doctor Kober,
now the honored dean of Georgetown University
medical faculty, give Emile Berliner's "clear in-
sight" in the field of popular health education
unqualified credit for the progress which Washing-
ton's vital statistics denote.
It was an attack of gastro-intestinal illness which
overtook one of his own offspring, a daughter Alice,
in 1900, that impelled Berliner to clear for action
against prevailing methods of combatting child dis-
ease. More than half a dozen skilled physicians did
their utmost to save the baby girl. But the days and
weeks passed without bringing improvement. When
Alice was six months old, she weighed a pound less
than at birth. Only her native vitality, supplemented
by starvation rations, kept her alive through a par-
ticularly hot Washington summer. At eight months,
Alice was still a puny infant of eight and one-half
236 EMILE BERLINER
pounds. But meantime Berliner, his scientific fight-
ing instinct aroused, had given intensive study to a
branch that was utterly virgin soil to him — child
nutrition. With Mrs. Berliner's hearty approval,
he took personal charge of Alice's case and person-
ally prescribed and prepared every ounce and swal-
low of the tot's food.
Slowly, but steadily, then swiftly, the baby
gained in weight and vigor. By the time of her first
birthday anniversary, Alice was plump, rosy and of
normal weight, tipping the scales at twenty-two and
one-half pounds. Breaking new paths, as was his
wont in the field of electro-magnetics and acoustics,
Berliner had won his first skirmish in a campaign
for child health that was to eventuate in a life-time
crusade. To-day the Alice Berliner of those anxious
years is a beautiful and healthy young woman, hap-
pily married to the young economist, Isadore Lubin,
of the Institute of Economics at "Washington, whose
keen analysis of the British coal crisis of 1926 at-
tracted wide-spread attention throughout the United
States.
Forthwith Berliner determined to dedicate him-
self to the promotion of public health and the eradi-
cation of preventable disease. The ravages of infant
mortality were, in 1900, not quite so terrifying as
when Doctor Dickson, of England, in 1851, fran-
tically asked: ''How shall we prevent the early
extinction of half the new-born children of men?"
Yet, twenty-seven years later, in 1878, out of every
PUBLIC HEALTH 237
thousand babies born in Washington, three hundred
and twenty-two died before they were a year old.
Mothers dreaded ''the second summer" of their
babies' lives as they feared the plague. In 1895 the
infant death-rate in the national capital was still
two hundred and ninety-seven and two-tenths per
thousand. Fully forty per cent, of the mortality
was due to gastro-intestinal complaints, and two and
one-half per cent, to primary tuberculosis of the
intestinal lymphatics.
These tell-tale figures caused Emile Berliner, on
the basis of his owti researches, strongly to suspect
that the morbific agent in intestinal and tubercular
cases was introduced into the human body with its
food. In addition to the lamentable losses of child
life directly attributable to impure or contaminated
milk, there were recorded by Doctor Kober in 1895,
throughout the world, one hundred and thirty-five
epidemics of tj^hoid ; seventy-four of scarlet fever ;
twenty-eight of diphtheria and several outbreaks of
septic sore throat, all traceable to infected milk. The
majority of epidemics occurred in countries where
almost exclusively raw milk is consumed.
Berliner's course was now charted. It lay
straight across the sea of dangers that lurk in raw
milk. He was among the first to realize the vast
importance of the fact that milk can be rendered
safe by heating and by killing any disease germs
secreted in it. The process, known to the world as
pasteurization, was, when Berliner and other scien-
238 EMILE BERLINER
tists first advocated it, opposed by the American
Pediatric Society on the ground that children could
not thrive on heated milk, but on the contrary con-
tracted scurvy and rickets from such nutrition. For
many years the general medical profession upheld
that theory.
How to combat the always influential voice of the
medical world became a problem, but Berliner, the
irrepressible pioneer, found the way. Convinced in
his own mind of the correctness of the principles
enunciated by a few sanitarians, he decided upon a
"Wake Up, Mothers!" campaign of wholly original
conception. In the spring of 1901, Berliner, in col-
laboration with a few sympathizing friends, formed
in "Washington under the expressive title of ''The
Society for the Prevention of Sickness" an organ-
ization to be devoted, in the first instance, merely;
to the spreading of knowledge.
For that purpose Berliner engaged, at his own
expense, advertising space in the Sunday news-
papers of Washington and filled it, week after week,
with what he called health bulletins. The first one
was published in the Washington Post of June 15,
1901, and read as follows:
MILK is notoriously one of the best soils
for the germination and multiplication of dis-
ease germs.
MANY EPIDEMICS of Typhoid, Malaria
and Scarlet Fever have been traced to infected
milk, not to speak of Tuberculosis from the
same source.
PUBLIC HEALTH 239
INSPECTION is rarely thorough and does
not prevent contamination of the milk supply.
SCALDING (or sterilizing) will destroy
most of the virulent germs, if not all.
SOME PEOPLE say that you should not
scald milk for fear of making it less easy to di-
gest. This is a very small matter compared
with infection. The advice is, besides, un-
founded, and should be disregarded.
ROBUST PEOPLE may with impunity dis-
regard rules of precaution, which are necessary
with weaker constitutions and children.
THEREFORE SCALD YOUR MILK.
SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OP
SICKNESS
The term "pasteurization" did not appear in
this bulletin. Instead, ''scalding" was recom-
mended, and in the use of that word Berliner had the
approval of the late Professor Jacques Loeb, after-
ward head of the division of general physiology at
the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Ber-
liner's bulletins were intended to instruct the com-
mon people, the housewives and the cooks, who could
not be expected to understand scientific expressions.
The word "scalding" was utilized as meaning the
use of heat without actual boiling. Boiling might
make milk less digestible for infants with weak
stomachs, according to the false notion then existing.
It would be interesting for modern milk sani-
tarians to look through Berliner 's pioneer collection
of milk bulletins. They were changed every week.
Many authorities were cited. The whole field of
240 EMILE BERLINER
milk dangers was spread before the public. Every
bulletin ended with the slogan: '* Scald the milk, and
keep it cool and covered afterward," and accentu-
ated the fact that inspection alone was insufficient.
This method of instructing the public was so un-
usual that soon after Berliner began launching the
bulletins, the Marine Hospital vService of the United
States Government asked the Health Officer of the
District of Columbia whom the Society for Preven-
tion of Sickness ''represented." An adequate an-
swer was promptly sent by Berliner.
The bulletins evidently impressed the health
authorities of the District of Columbia as early as
1903, because a newspaper clipping of July four-
teenth of that year mentions that the Milk Dealers'
and Producers' Associations of Maryland, Virginia
and the District of Columbia were up in arms
against Doctor Woodward, the health officer, irri-
tated at what they termed "his unjust persecution
of their members." Two days afterward an edi-
torial in the Washington Times, headed ''The Milk
Problem," dealt with the question, insisting that
milk dealers must supply pure milk in order to re-
duce infant mortality.
Berliner continued the milk bulletins in spite of
the stubborn opposition of many physicians to the
use of heat as an immunizer of milk — an opposition
which to some extent persists to the present day.
In addition to stigmatizing impure milk, the
bulletins of the Society for the Prevention of Sick-
PUBLIC HEALTH 241
ness pointed out the clangers in ice-cream, butter
and dairy products made from non-pasteurized
cream and milk. This voluntary, popularized prop-
aganda, systematically and efficiently conducted
under Berliner's personal direction, supplied the
people of the National Capital with a liberal educa-
tion in the science of health. Its ramifications prob-
ably were nation-wide. What Washington thinks
and does to-day, the country frequently thinks and
does to-morrow, because its representatives in Con-
gress and the great government departments are
habitually relaying to the outer United States that
which, from time to time, is noteworthy in the Dis-
trict of Columbia.
Certainly no phase of life at Washington was
literally more vital in its beneficent results than
Berliner's health crusade. When he embarked upon
it, infant mortality at Washington was still two hun-
dred and seventy-four and five-tenths out of every
thousand children born. Not a quart of milk sold in
the District of Columbia was pasteurized. In 1914,
according to Doctor Woodward, the District health
officer, half of the bottled milk sold in Washing-
ton was pasteurized. In 1924, according to Doctor
Fowler, then health officer, ninetj^-seven per cent, of
the milk marketed was pasteurized. There was no
law compelling what Berliner used to call "the scald-
ing of milk, ' ' but the public having been educated to
demand it, pasteurization automatically came about.
In 1924 infant mortality had fallen to seventy-
242 EMILE BERLINER
five and seven-tenths per thousand. Typhoid fever
was reduced from seventy-two fatalities per one
hundred thousand of population in 1900 to between
four and five per one hundred thousand in 1924.
Pulmonary consumption in the same period fell
from four hundred and ninety-two deaths among
the colored population to two hundred and thirty-
eight, and, among the whites, from one hundred and
eighty-three to sixty-two. In 1925 white mortality
was as low as fifty.
''This is indeed a field of glory,'* exclaimed one
of the reviewers of Emile Berliner's health work
at the meeting of the Association for the Prevention
of Tuberculosis, held in honor of his seventy-fifth
birthday anniversary in 1926. "But for him, scien-
tific facts might have remained unnoticed for a long
time."*
A decided step forward in the movement for safe
milk was taken in the year 1907, when the Committee
on Tuberculosis of the Associated Charities, of
which Brigadier-General George M. Sternberg,
former Surgeon-General of the United States Army,
was chairman, created a Milk Committee and made
Emile Berliner its chairman. The other members of
the committee were Doctor E. C. Schroeder and
Doctor AVilliam H. Dexter of the Bureau of Animal
Industry; Doctor D. E. Buckingham, the veter-
inarian, and Wallace Hatch, secretary of the Associ-
ated Charities.
*From parchment testimonial presented to Emile Berliner on
May 20, 1926.
Pkuf. IIekmanx Ludwig Fer-
dinand VON Helmholtz. Died
AT Berlin, Germany, Sept. 8,
1894
Dr. Ernest C. Schroeder,
Biologist, Director U. JS.
Animal Experiment Station,
Bethesda, Md., Whose
Friendship and Cooperation
Mr. Berliner Enjoyed for
Many Years
Heinrich Hertz 07 Germany,
Who Was the First to Dem-
onstrate That When an
Electric Spark Jumps
through the Air it Causes
Electric Waves, Etc. Elec-
tric Waves Travel at the
Eate of 183.000 Miles Per
Second. This Discovery
Made Eadio Messages Pos-
sible
Hon. Herbert C. Hoover
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PUBLIC HEALTH 243
At the first conferences of tlie milk committee at
Berliner's home, milk problems were discussed at
length. Doctor Schroeder made known to the com-
mittee his recent discovery that the feces of tubercu-
lous cows are often heavily charged with virulent
tubercle bacilli, and pointed out that the examina-
tion of numerous samples of market milk disclosed
that very little milk entirely free from contamina-
tion with cow feces reaches the consumer. Hence,
according to Doctor Schroeder, the presence of a
single tuberculous cow in a dairy herd had to be re-
garded as a danger through which any portion or all
of the milk from the herd might become infected
with tubercle bacilli.
Berliner was so impressed with the importance
of the Schroeder discovery that he proposed that his
committee should request the Associated Charities
to call a general conference on milk problems, of
sufficient scope to include representatives of the Dis-
trict of Columbia Health Office and the several
bureaus of the Federal Government which have pub-
lic-health functions. The suggestion was accepted
by the committee and conmiunicated to General
Sternberg, who endorsed it.
On March 30, 1907, the call of the Commissioners
of the District of Columbia for a milk conference
was issued. The men invited to participate com-
prised most of the prominent authorities on sanita-
tion that could be assembled from among Washing-
ton scientists and from the bureaus of the National
244 EMILE BERLINER
Government. Besides these, members of the differ-
ent milk associations were invited. The Bar
Association, the Veterinary Association, the "Wash-
ington Academy of Sciences and the Chemical
Society of Washington also were represented.
The result of the conference was the adoption of
milk standards formulated by Doctor A. D. Melvin,
of the Department of Agriculture, whereupon the
cause of pasteurization received the strong endorse-
ment of the Federal Government. This development
compelled the American Pediatric Society to assume
the defensive. As an immediate consequence, the
health department of the City of New York called a
milk conference in 1909, and then and there adopted
milk standards similar to those previously endorsed
in Washington.* To this New York conference its
organizers specially invited Doctor E. C. Schroeder,
Doctor G. L. Magruder and Emile Berliner, and
they made their influence felt in the proceedings
which culminated in unqualified approval of pas-
teurization.
Ultimately the proceedings and reports of the
Washington conference were published by the De-
partment of Agriculture as Circular 114. Copies of
it can be found in the files of health bureaus and
associations the world over. When Professor von
Pirquet, the renowned child-hygienist of the Univer-
*Natlian Straus, who in 1892 originated, and has since main-
tained, a system of distribution of pasteurized milk to the poor of
New York City, for years combatted the opposition of the Pediatric
Society and of medical men who refused to recognize the manifest
results that flowed from sterilized milk.
PUBLIC HEALTH 245
sity of Vienna, visited Washington, Berliner was
told that his gospel of safe milk for healthy infants
had spread to Europe and was universally ac-
claimed. The work of the Washington milk con-
ference became eventually the foundation of
municipal and state dairy laws in many parts of the
country, and references to its importance can be
found in transatlantic publications, notably in Eng-
land, where it received high praise.
Stimulated by the constructive achievements of
the Washington milk conference, the Society for
Prevention of Sickness prosecuted its campaign
with increased vigor. The Society, at Berliner's in-
stigation, initiated various other reforms connected
with the milk supply. He attacked Washington
hospitals because they furnished indiscriminate raw
milk to their patients. He criticized in particular
certain children's hospitals because several of their
leading doctors continued to oppose pasteurization.
As early in his warfare on impure milk as 1907
Berliner had pointed out, in a prepared paper, what
he called ''Some Neglected Essentials in the Fight
Against Consumption. ' ' In the closing paragraphs,
he said:
"Let me suggest to those humanitarians who
labor in the cause of the prevention of consumption
that no agitation is as efficient as that begun in the
Public Schools. If modern text-books could be in-
troduced, dealing not only with the causes and pre-
vention of consumption, but w^th prophylaxis in
general, it would plant the seed of knowledge where
it would bear the richest fruit.
246 EMILE BERLINER
**But such text-books would only half fulfill their
mission, or indeed entirely fail in it, if undue prom-
inence were bestowed on the hunting and destroying
of the tubercle bacilli and too little stress placed
upon the more important essentials for the fortify-
ing of the human body, thereby maintaining and
increasing its natural power of resistance to all
diseases, including consumption."
That was the first time that health education
through the schools was ever publicly emphasized.
Within a few years the Tuberculosis Association at
Washington, of which Berliner was for seven years
the president, inaugurated its literary campaign on
the lines proposed by him and under his leader-
ship. Three years later, in 1910, the Berliner com-
mittee began the distribution of twenty-five thousand
copies of the Twelve Rules for Health adopted by
the Association. They were printed in words of one
syllable on card-board in two colors for display in
the Washington public schools from the fourth
grade up. Teachers would explain, and comment
upon, the rules; children would take copies home,
and the advice to parents, printed on the envelope,
to tack up or frame the rules in the house was gen-
erally followed. The Tuberculosis Association also
authorized the publication of a book entitled
Washington Health Rules. Copies were distributed
among school-teachers and, to this day, are pre-
sented to all graduates of District of Columbia
normal schools.
In 1919, in order to teach the young idea as early
PUBLIC HEALTH 247
in life as possible to shoot straight in the direction
of health, Berliner conceived the quaint notion of
turning his Rules for Health into simple nursery
rhymes and illustrating them in colors for the use
of third-grade pupils. Children were encouraged by
their teachers to memorize the rhymes. Here is one
of his lyrics, entitled TJie Gentle Cow:
*'When milk is raw just from the farm
It's full of germs which may do harm;
But safe it is and highly prized
When it is boiled or pasteurized
Ice-cream, cheese and butter-fat
Come from milk — you all know that.
Made from raw milk, we can see
They might harm both you and me."
As an incentive to schools and school children to
take part in the crusade for public health, Berliner
in 1920 endowed a Silver Trophy Cup, to be awarded
annually by the National Tuberculosis Association
to the city showing the largest proportionate enroll-
ment of pupils engaged in the health crusade. Ber-
liner is a director of the National Association. In
1921 his cup was won by the public schools of Wash-
inton, D. C, and presented by President Harding.
Last year Berliner endowed a similar trophy to be
awarded in the Dominion of Canada.
In 1921 Berliner resorted to a new and far-
reaching departure in his child health work. With
the professional cooperation of Doctor Alfred J.
Steinberg, of Washington, a graduate of Harvard
248 EMILE BERLINER
Medical School and a children's specialist, Berliner
wrote and published The Bottle-Fed Baby* Its
purpose was to infonn the young mother in prac-
tical, concise terms exactly how a bottle-fed baby
should be reared.
Berhner's plan was to place a free copy in the
hands of every new mother in the District of Colum-
bia, rich or poor, for within its pages were packed
more useful facts and figures than ever before were
issued in manuals of maternity information five or
six times the size. The District health authorities
readily acceded to Berliner's wish to be placed reg-
ularly and promptly in possession of names and ad-
dresses of newly-reported mothers. To this writing,
midsummer, 1926, and within a period of five years,
more than fifty thousand copies of The Bottle-Fed
Baby have been distributed. Berliner still super-
intends personally its circulation to new mothers as
fast as their names are supplied him.
This Silver Jubilee of humanitarian work and
Diamond Jubilee of Emile Berliner's life find Ber-
liner waging the never-ending war for public hy-
•Professor Ealph V. Magoffin, president of the Archeological
lastitute of America and head of the department of charities of New
Tork University, brought back from Egypt in June, 1926, a black
stone nursing bottle ■which did service in the land of the Pharaohs in
1200 B. C. As proof of the utensil's use for the rearing of Egj'ptian
infants three thousand one hundred and twenty-six years ago. Pro-
fessor Magoffin pointed out that the bottle is heavily constructed at
the bottom to prevent tipping and has square sides to avoid rolling.
The top is very much like that of nursing bottles of the present age.
The American archeologist considers the Eg;v7jtion nursing bottle
Bcientifically superior to its modem type. Emile Berliner's comment
on Professor Magoffin's discovery waB "There's nothing new under
the sun. "
PUBLIC HEALTH 249
giene from a three-story building which he erected
and dedicated to its exclusive purposes in 1924.
It is what military men might call a General Head-
quarters for Child Health. A modest sign informs
the passer-by in Columbia Eoad — less than a stone's
throw from the site of the rambling old home where
Berliner made his earliest gramophone experi-
ments— that within is the ''Bureau of Health Edu-
cation." One of its features is a class-room where
yomig mothers with their children come regularly
for education, by chart, picture and blackboard. In
1909 Berliner erected an infirmary building at the
Starmont Tuberculosis Sanitarium near Washing-
ton in memory of his own father.
Restless in the achievement of constructive
works for public health, Emile Berliner in 1925, ^^'ith
the assistance of Mrs. E. E. Grant, a member of his
Committee on Publications, secured the passage by
Congress of a modern milk law for the District of
Columbia, which was drafted by Doctor W. C.
Fowler, health officer of the Federal area. Mrs.
Grant succeeded in enlisting the interest of Mrs.
Calvin Coolidge, an ideal mother, who herself had
only a little while before suffered the loss of her
second-born. Since the passage of the law, the milk
supply in the District of Columbia, much of which
had been of low sanitary rating, has been of uni-
formly high standard.
Had Emile Berliner never touched the telephone
or the talking machine, his health work should make
250 EMILE BERLINER
secure his claim to the gratitude of his era and of
eras to come. The tears it has saved, the mother
hearts it has spared from anguish, can never be
recorded in the vital statistics. But that he has
made child life sweeter, surer and safer is estab-
lished beyond all peradventure.*
^Berliner's published coutributions to the literature of the con-
servation of child life include:
Some Neglected Essentials in the Fight against Consumption;
Sccent Developments in Infant Feeding ; History of the Society for
the Frevention of SicJcness; The Tuberculin Test as a Factor in the
Milk Traffic; The Outbreak of Typhoid Fever i?i Cassel in 1909;
Opening Address "before a Congressional Sub-Committee on Milk
Legislation for the District of Columbia; Hospital Milk; High. Ty-
phoid Mortality in Tj^asliington Hospitals and Their Milk Supply;
The Literary Health Propaganda of the Washington Tuberculosis
Association; What Constitutes Municipal Responsibility; How a
Love Kiss May ie a Death Kiss; Twelve Health Rhymes (used reg-
ularly in Washington schools) ; Are Annual Winter Epidemics Caused
by Infected Butter:
CHAPTER XXV
BERLINEB AND RADIO
WHILE this biography was in the making, a
letter arrived at the Post-Office in Washing-
ton, post-marked Battle Creek, Michigan, and ad-
dressed as follows:
To the Inventor of the Microphone,
Washington, D. C.
In due course, it was delivered at No. 2400 Six-
teenth Street, N. W., the residence of Emile Ber-
liner. The omniscient postal authorities of the
capital city knew more about the origin of radio
than the average American, to whom, no doubt, it
"udll come with surprise to learn that, but for Emile
Berliner's trail-blazing, the miracle of broadcast-
ing— any more than the telephone — would hardly be
what it is to-day.
In the perfection of that eighth wonder of the
world Berliner played a fundamental role. Without
the Berliner microphone, "the crowning achieve-
ment of the spirit of invention," as radio was re-
cently eulogized, might still be a voice screeching
251
252 EMILE BERLINER
through the static wilderness instead of having
become the oracle of the universe.
The "mike," as the broadcasting fraternity has
affectionately dubbed the microphone, is but one
part of the heritage bequeathed to radio by tele-
phony. Berliner invented and patented it for use
in the ordinary telephone, where it soon became
known, as it is to-day, as the transmitter. Tech-
nically, the microphone and the transmitter are
identical. The ''mike's" history and development,
like that of the receiver, the amplifier and the
vacuum tube, involved long and painstaking re-
search before it was converted into the perfect
instrument through which sound now spans the
Atlantic and reverberates from end to end of the
North American continent, not excepting even the
frozen reaches of the Arctic.
Curious as it may seem, the highly efficient
microphone used in broadcasting was developed
long before its present use was anticipated. It was
first utilized as a laboratory instrument in connec-
tion with researches conducted mth transmitted
speech. Speech, of course, is the product with which
telephone engineers are most concerned. They ex-
periment with it much as the chemist treats chemi-
cal compounds. It may be analyzed into its elements
and each element studied by itself in order better to
understand the conditions and requirements which
telephone circuits must meet. In this ''speech
chemistry," it is necessarj- that the experimental
BERLINER AND RADIO 253
transmitter produce exact electrical copies of the
speech to be studied ; therefore, a good transmitter
is an all-essential feature. When broadcasting
began, this "high quality" microphone was ready
for the new role.
To be capable of perfect reproduction the micro-
phone must respond to high pitched tones and low
pitched tones equally. If any of the tones are either
over-emphasized or under-emphasized, an unnat-
uralness results. This is usually known as "distor-
tion." Microphones are now built which respond
vdth great fidelity to all of the frequencies between
fifty and five thousand vibrations per second.
Naturally, because of the very severe require-
ments which it must meet, the broadcasting micro-
phone is constructed somewhat differently from the
telephone transmitter. It consists of an "air-
damped" diaphragm on each side of which is located
a cup of carbon granules. The result is that during
operation the granules in one cup are compressed
and possess a low resistance, while those in the other
are released and possess a high resistance. Be-
cause of this double feature, the microphone is
sometimes referred to as the "push-pull" tj'pe. The
air damping supplies a very thin air cushion (about
one one-thousandth of an inch thick) which tends to
minimize any resonant effects that might otherwise
be present, due to the springiness of the diaphragm.
Not only must the microphone respond to a wide
range of frequencies faithfully, but it must repro-
254 EMILE BERLINER
duce a wide range of intensities. The same micro-
phone that reproduces the grand crescendo of a
whole orchestra may a moment later be required to
reproduce the most delicate strains of a violin,
which may scarcely be audible even to those in the
same room. Indeed, the power represented by such
sounds is barely a millionth of a watt, and the re-
sulting motion of the diaphragm is too small to be
detected. Experiments to develop the microphone
were carried out in the Bell System's extensive
laboratories which date back to the early Bell Com-
pany 's experimental department started by Berliner
and Watson in 1879.
All this explains why various means have to be
used to encourage a speaker or singer to stand at the
proper distance from the microphone — about four
feet. Experience has shown that if a small rug is
placed in front of the microphone pedestal, a speak-
er will unconsciously tend to confine himself to that
region. Others do not feel oratorically at home un-
less they can walk around while talking, in which
case provisions for long-distance speaking must be
made. Temperamental radio performers accus-
tomed to the bare floor of the stage have refused to
sing while standing on plush carpet! In one in-
stance, the program was delayed until boards could
be brought in.
In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell, a profound Eng-
lish mathematician and apostle of Michael Faraday,
published his classic Electricity and Magnetism, in
BERLINER AND RADIO 255
which he boldly proclaimed the theory that electric
waves could be reflected and refracted like light.
He maintained that if the electrical wave motion
with which Faraday experimented could be meas-
ured it, too, would be found to travel at the speed of
one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second.
The first man to demonstrate the correctness of
Maxwell's theory, and to show that electric waves
navigate the ether in the same manner as light
waves, was Heinrich Hertz, a humble German pro-
fessor at Bonn University. Hertz created in his
laboratory electric sparks, or little flashes of artifi-
cial lightning. With their aid, he established that
electric sparks cause electric waves in the ether pre-
cisely as sound causes acoustic waves in the air.
''Hertzian waves," as the astounded electrical
world forthwith and thenceforward called the Bonn
physicist's discovery, riveted scientists' attention in
many lands. Branly, in France ; Lodge, in England,
and Popoff, in Russia, contributed substantially, by
experiment and research, to the knowledge of
''Hertzian waves." But to none of them did it occur
that waves in the ether might be impressed into
service for transmitting messages over immense
distances. Years after radio communication was an
accomplished fact. Sir Oliver Lodge wrote that he
"did not realize that there would be a practical ad-
vantage in . . . telegraphing across space. . . .
In this non-perception of the practical uses of wire-
less telegraphy, I undoubtedly erred.'*
256 EMILE BERLINER
It was reserved for William Marconi, twenty-
two-3^ear-old son of an Italian father and an Irish
mother, to patent in 1896 a system of utilizing Hert-
zian waves for telegraphing through the air with the
Morse key. ''At the receiving station," writes
Waldemar Kaempffert (A Popular Bistort/ of
American Invention), "was the equally familiar re-
ceiving apparatus, in which a detector (the Branly-
Lodge form of 'eye') was included. The Morse key
was depressed. Sparks passed. They sent out
waves into the ether. The key was released. The
sparks and the waves ceased. Thus long or short
trains of waves were sent out, corresponding with
the dashes and dots of the Morse code. The receiver
responded sympathetically. The eye or detector
'saw' while the key was down. It 'saw' nothing
when the key was up. It received invisible telegraph
flashes."
Thus was radio horn.
By the end of 1897 Marconi was acclaimed the
world round for the incredible feat of signaling nine
or ten miles. "Half a mile was the mldest dream,'*
said Sir William Preece, of the British Post-Office
Department, when conmienting upon the expecta-
tions of Marconi's more optimistic devotees.
Radio broadcasting, which is just another name
for telephoning without wires, may be explained as
follows :
If we throw a stone into a placid sheet of water,
a series of ring-shaped waves is produced on the
BERLINER AND RADIO 257
surface, stretching out in all directions until finally
they become lost in the distance. An analogous
action takes place when an electric spark rushes
through the air. Forthmth electric waves radiate
from the spark in all directions at a speed of about
one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second.
There exist to-day other and more effective
means in electrical science for producing thousands
of these electric impulses in quick succession, so
that we can produce such a stream of ether waves
as to amount practically to a continuous ether wave
current. If such a current, which may be called a
** carrying current," is passed through one coil of a
transformer before being thrown out into space at
the broadcasting antenna, and then a speech wave
current, produced by a microphone, is passed
through the other coil of the same transformer, the
electric speech vibrations will be impressed by in-
duction, or electric influence, upon the carrjdng
current. Then they mil be taken along by the carry-
ing current into space, to be picked up by the thou-
sands of smaller antenna of the listeners-in with
recei\dng apparatus. Thus, it is seen that the micro-
phone is the means by which all sound to be broad-
cast is sent, and that the transformer is the
apparatus which unites with that sound the energy
by which that sound is carried an unlimited distance.
Both of these inventions, the microphone and the
continuous current transformer used in radio broad-
casting, ivere made hi/ Emile Berliner in 1877.
258 EMILE BERLINER
It is plain from this simplified explanation that
in broadcasting, the speech current passes through
the ether in all directions and practically fills the
ether of the whole world. It can be caught up any-
where by receiving antenna, but before the now
greatly enfeebled speech current can be made au-
dible in the telephone receiver it has to be reinforced
or amplified. This is accomplished by the well-
known modern vacuum tube, or amplifier tube, in-
vented by Lee De Forest, without which it would be
practically impossible to listen to broadcasting over
any great distance. De Forest's invention is one of
the truly remarkable contributions to electricity and
one of the greatest inventions of all time.
''Wired wireless" is the term applied where
broadcast matter is sent part of the way over a long-
distance telephone wire, to be tapped at any inter-
mediate station and then sent or relayed through
the ether. Wired wireless is the invention of Major-
General George Owen Squier, U. S. A., retired,
a friend and neighbor of Emile Berliner at Wash-
ington. For a number of years radio was beset with
various exasperating difficulties. Broadcasting was
largely confined to the winter season. It suffered
from the now celebrated ''static" and frequently
from a sudden "fading out" of the voice or other
broadcast sounds. It also was much more efficient
at night than during daylight.
These and other atmospheric disorders were re-
moved by "wired wireless." In General Squier 's
BERLINER AND RADIO 259
system tlie radio waves are guided along telegraph,
telephone, or even electric light mres, and are not
affected by ether disturbances in space. Arrived at
a station, the reproductions are from there broad-
cast (relayed) for lesser distances over allotted
ether wave lengths. ''Wired wireless" has lifted
radio from out of the depths of totally unreliable
acoustic effects to the plane of an exact science. It
lies at the bottom of the ''hook up" system whereby
radio to-day enjoys its fabulous radius of action.
What mighty strides has radio accomplished in
the thirty years that have intervened since William
Marconi, in 1896, achieved the miracle of communi-
cating by wireless telegraphy over a distance of one
and three-fourths miles! Amazing and revolution-
ary as have been the fruits of scientific invention,
none rivals the romance of radio. In America the
art has reached its highest development. Broad-
casting has become as integral a part of the nation's
daily life as telephoning and the newspapers. It is
difficult to conceive what modern American existence
would be without a receiving set, to be turned on
and off like an electric light switch. Radio is to-day
almost as indispensable to human intercourse in the
United States as the automobile. Six million
homes are estimated to be equipped with radio re-
ceivers, and the number is increasing every hour of
each day. Already the percentage is nearly one set
to every four homes. America has eighty per cent.
of all the receiving sets in the world and five times
260 EMILE BERLINER
as many broadcasting stations as all the rest of the
countries put together.
Two thousand firms of radio manufacturers, one
thousand firms of radio distributors and jobbers,
and thirty thousand radio retail dealers comprise an
industry which did two million dollars' worth of
business in 1920 ; three hundred and fifty million dol-
lars, in 1925, and probably will do four hundred
million, or more, in 1926. Directly or indirectly em-
ployed in radio throughout the world is an army of
two hundred and fifty thousand persons.
On January 1, 1922, there were but twenty-eight
licensed broadcasting stations in the United States,
the first one having received its authority to begin
operations on September 15, 1921 — one of the red-
letter days of radio history. On May 29, 1926, there
were five hundred and thirty-three licensed broad-
casting stations. The number is limited only by
the determination of the Department of Commerce,
in the hands of which regulation of radio to the
hour of this writing has been vested, to keep as clear
as possible the ever-increasing traffic jam in the air.
No new broadcasting licenses were issued by Sec-
retary Hoover subsequent to November, 1925,
although his department had on file, at the beginning
of the summer of 1926, no fewer than six hundred
and twenty-three applications for new licenses for
stations in all parts of the United States.
On May 29, 1926, radio activities in the United
States were officially tabulated as follows:
BERLINER AND RADIO 261
Class of Station
Number of Stations
Conunercial Ship
1963
Commercial Land
323
Commercial Airplane
1
Technical and Training
35
Experimental
212
Government Ship
12U
Government Land
312
Government Airplane
4
On June 30, 1925, at the end of the last fiscal year
of record, there were listed 15,111 amateur radio
stations. The figures of ship stations are eloquent of
the magical growth of radio. In 1909 the steamship
Republic of the White Star Line met in collision
the Italian ship Florida off Nantucket. The crash
came in the middle of the night. The first call for
help flashed from the ocean by a wireless operator
thrilled the whole world. This was the immortal
"C. Q. D." signal sent by Jack Binns, whose cool-
ness and presence of mind resulted in saving the
lives of one thousand, five hundred human beings on
a sinking ship. It was the Republic disaster that
focused the world's attention upon a struggling art
and crystallized, in dramatic form, the priceless
value of radio on shipboard. In a sense, radio has
robbed the sea of its terrors. To-day all sea-going
vessels carrying fifty persons or more are required
by international law to carry radio installation and
competent operators. In 1913 there were but
262 EMILE BERLINER
four hundred and seventy-nine American vessels
equipped with radio. In 1926, as the figures herein-
before set down indicate, three thousand, one hun-
dred and seventy-seven American ships are fitted
vAth. the most effective life-saving apparatus the
mind of man has yet devised.
Achievements in the broadcasting realm during
the past two or three years have piled up in an
unceasing crescendo of magnitude. Literally, no
one dares predict where they will end. Develop-
ments that seem fantastic to-day are altogether
likely to be recorded to-morrow. "Radio vision" is
believed to be just over the horizon. Transatlantic
radio-photograms burst upon the astounded gaze of
American and British newspaper readers, as a daily
feature, in the spring of 1926. Europe and the Amer-
icas exchange music and conversation by radio with
relative ease, though not, as yet, with that complete
accuracy or dependability which distinguish long-
distance transmission and reception between points
in the western hemisphere. On the north shore of
Long Island the Radio Corporation of America,
pioneer in transoceanic broadcasting, has con-
structed a "Radio Central" — a superpower radio
station for the simultaneous desiJatch of messages
to, and the receipt of messages from, countries
across the Atlantic. This colossus of radio, with its
steel towers covering more than ten square miles of
land, has made the United States the focal point
of the world in the transmission and reception of
BERLINER AND EADIO 263
wireless intelligence. It stands as a monument to
American achievement, the greatest mile-stone in
the progress of radio across the oceans. "Radio
Central" was opened for public service on Novem-
ber 5, 1921, with a message to the world from the
late President Harding. The message was received
simultaneously and directly in twenty-eight differ-
ent countries, including far-off New Zealand, Aus-
tralia and the southermost republics of South
America.
A year earlier, in November, 1920, radio was
employed for the first time on a large scale as a
means of broadcasting news of general interest.
For that purpose the Westinghouse Company
erected a broadcasting station KDKA at its great
plant in East Pittsburgh and inaugurated the
world's pioneer organized "radio program" service
with the announcement of the Harding-Cox presi-
dential election returns. Crude as that service was,
compared with that rendered by the modern broad-
casting station, it was a startling demonstration of
the universal and beneficent power of radio. Little
did the small groups of first listeners realize that
within six years the all-penetrating voice of radio
would echo into six million American homes.
Men and women differ as to what constitutes
radio's outstanding achievement to date. There
are several events that merit distinction and each
was so marvelous that there is glory enough for all
of them. When Firpo, the "wild bull of the pam-
264 EMILE BERLINER
pas," knocked Jack Dempsey out of the ring at the
Polo Grounds in New York City on September 14,
1923, the devastating punch from the Argentinian
gladiator's glove was caught by the ringside micro-
phone and heard a thousand miles away. Almost a
year later to the day — on the memorable night of
September 12, 1924 — General John J. Pershing,
about to retire from the generalship of the Armies
of the United States, said good-by by radio, from his
desk in the AVar Department, to the commanders of
the nine corps areas of the country, stretching all
the way from Governors Island in New York to the
Presidio at San Francisco. It was not exactly a con-
fidential farewell that Pershing took of his devoted
subordinates, for the entire nation listened in, and
enjoyed the General's half -bantering, half-sorrow-
ing, parting confabs with his comrades precisely as
if he were addressing every individual listener per-
sonally. It was a historic night, never to be forgot-
ten by any one privileged to be part of it, as millions
upon millions of the American people were.
Although Pershing was retiring from the army
that night, the hook-up of the nation's broadcasting
facilities on a continent-wide scale was designed
primarily as part and parcel of the Defense Day
test that day inaugurated. As explained to the
millions of listeners by General J. J. Carty, one
of the vice-presidents of the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company, which was in charge of the
mighty talkfest, its purpose was to illustrate in a
BERLINER AND RADIO 265
practical manner the progress of communications.
Mr. Carty said:
''The uses of radio in the national defense are
many and one of its special functions is to carry
to all of our citizens a national proclamation or call,
or a message directed to the people at large. Omit-
ting the great volume of messages carried daily over
the telegraph wires, there passes each day over the
telephone wires of the United States a grand total
of fifty million messages. In handling this enor-
mous volume of traffic, forty-five million miles of
wire are in action, and their availability for serv-
ice, should they be required in the national defense,
has been demonstrated. This wire system is spread
over our country like a great net covering the whole
republic. From Washington direct connections may
be established with more than twenty thousand cen-
tral telephone offices, providing inter-communication
between them and more than fifteen million individ-
ual telephone stations. Employed in this mighty
inter-communication system throughout the United
States are four hundred and twenty-five thousand
men and women. This Defense Day test has demon-
strated that they can be depended upon to perform
any duty ^vithin their power that may devolve upon
them at a moment of national emergency.
''In order that you of the air audience should
hear the addresses broadcast this evening, nineteen
radio stations have been called into service and
thirty-eight thousand miles of wire are employed.
From these radio stations the words are carried di-
rect to your ears. It is possible to hold a conversa-
tion over the long distance telephone wires between
Washington and any point in the United States.
Because the radio stations are connected to the
wires over which I am now talking, it is possible for
all those who are listening by radio to hear the con-
versations.
266 EMILE BERLINER
"I will now call over the long distance wires a
number of cities and towns extending from the At-
lantic seaboard westward to the Pacific, placing all
of them in direct wire communication with this room
at Washington. To-night the radio stations are con-
nected to these wires so the radio listeners may hear
the conversations taking place over them. In the
event of a national emergency, such messages would
reach only the individuals for whom they were in-
tended. ' '
There is a plain-told tale worthy of the Arabian
Nights. Such an achievement in communication was
never before attempted in the history of the world.
It was an epoch-making event.
The year 1924 was in countless directions an era
of tremendous accomplishment in radio. Its high-
water mark was the broadcasting of the Democratic
''national confusion" in Madison Square Garden
through those endless and bellicose days and nights
of June and July. How many millions of edified,
amused or horrified American citizens on that hectic
occasion heard Alabama bellow, ''twenty-four votes
for Underwood," ballot after ballot; or listened in
while Senator Thomas J. Walsh, the permanent and
patient chairman of the bedlam, besought some
delegate to "state his question"; or heard "Al"
Smith's bands and boosters blare Tlie Sidewalks of
New York ; or picked up, as millions did, every side
remark uttered on the convention platform, even
if it were only a stage whisper — how many of our
people took part by radio in that unparalleled orgy
of political turmoil will never be known. But it was
BERLINER AND RADIO 267
a prodigious event, the like of which humankind had
never kno^^^l. There are cynics who avow that the
ability of the whole people to listen in while the
Democratic ''national dissension" was in progress in
1924 was one of the reasons why its splendid nom-
inee, John W. Da\ds, was not elected.
In the ensuing national campaign radio's possi-
bilities for political purposes w^ere utilized to the
full. President Coolidge had no need, as his im-
mediate predecessor had, to conduct a front-porch
campaign, or to swing around the circle and across
country as many predecessors had done. All Mr.
Coolidge had to do was to sit in his office or living-
room at the White House and broadcast his message
to the electorate, which he repeatedly did, while
millions listened in. The President does not shine
as a visible public speaker. But as a radio broad-
caster he has taken his place among the immortals.
The Coolidge nasal twang "cuts through" the ether
ideally and makes the President a perfect performer
on the wave lengths. The night before election, in
1924, both the Republican and Democratic candi-
dates sang their campaign swan songs by radio.
Mr. Coolidge was particularly etfective. He was
also uncommonly human. "And now," he said, just
before closing, "I want to send a good-night greet-
ing to my father, w^io is listening in at our old home
near Plymouth, Vermont." There are people who
say it was his economy program that swept Calvin
Coolidge into victory next day by a fabulous plu-
268 EMILE BERLINER
rality. That may be. But certain it is that the radio
message to his father, since gathered to his progeni-
tors, struck a responsive chord through the air
audience across the country and made countless
votes for the Republican ticket. Radio has never
known a more kin-making touch of human nature.
The Republican National Committee estimated that
the President's final speech of the campaign by
radio was delivered to an audience of over ten
million people. In 1925, when Governor Smith was
battling with the New York Legislature, he resorted
to the radio as a means of bringing popular pressure
to bear upon a hostile Assembly and Senate and
succeeded in doing so. He broadcast an appeal to
the people to write their representatives at Albany.
They wrote, and *'Al's" program went through.
The present writer, for the past three years,
has been broadcasting regularly each week, except
during the dull season at Washington, a review
of national and international events known as
The Political Situation in Washington To-night
originally sent out from only station WRC of the
Radio Corporation of America, it later was relayed
through the super-power station of the same com-
pany, WJZ, at New York. Exactly how many
millions of people listen to that weekly digest of the
nation's business can not be guessed, except approx-
imately. But the total runs into staggering figures.
No one unprivileged to enjoy the unprecedented
opportunity so generously offered, in the name of
W\'JJ>£>«S^^^>i:^l^]M^
'^^^ ! I /K' . ' ?i - -'-S-^ > ail'
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V
6
BERLINER AND RADIO 269
public service, b}^ the Radio Corporation of America
can comprehend the thrill it inspires every time the
microphone at Washington is faced. One is cer-
tainly reaching a "circulation" outstripping many
times the largest number of readers any newspaper
reaches. It is not only a post of thrill. It is a
station of responsibility. It carries voice and views
into the White House and into the ears of members
of the Cabinet, of Congress and of the diplomatic
corps. It provokes a mountainous correspondence —
the most instructive cross-section of popular opin-
ion encountered in the broadcaster's quarter of a
century of journalism. It has taught him the price-
less value of objectivity and of understatement. It
has sometimes made him wonder whether the com-
munication of news and views one day may not
become a regular function of the air rather than the
monopoly of the press.
Two giants of radio — Herbert Hoover, Secretary
of Commerce, to whose lot first fell the task of
supervising broadcasting activities in the United
States, and David Sarnoff, brilliant young vice-
president and general manager of the Radio Cor-
poration of America — have said terse and illumi-
nating things about the magical public utiUty that
is making the world over.
"Radio," says Hoover, "has already become so
embedded in American life that we forget that the
development of this great scientific discovery is but
a little over five years old. I do not believe any
270 EMILE BERLINER
other generation in history has had the privilege of
witnessing the progress from birth to adolescence of
an invention so profoundly affecting the social and
economic life of the peoples of the world. No other
discovery in all time invaded the home so rapidly
and intrenched itself so securely as radio, and,
though it is still far from maturity, we see great
advances every year. . . . We have watched the
industry grow from the curiosity of a scientific toy
to a communication system now well-nigh universaL
So great has it become in service that I believe it
would be almost possible in a great emergency for
the President of the United States to address an
audience of forty or fifty millions of our people.
It is bringing a vast amount of educational and in-
formative material into the household. It is bring-
ing about a better understanding among all of our
people of the many problems that confront us. It
is improving the public taste for music and enter-
tainment. It is bringing contentment into the home.
We are at the threshold of international exchange of
ideas by direct speech. That will bring us better
understanding of mutual world problems.
''Only over-optimistic prophets would attempt
to predict radio advance. One thing we are sure
of — that the radio industry is only in its youth, that
it will continue to grow with increasing strength.
If it will succeed, it must continue as in the past to
devote itself to actual public service, to which it is
already dedicated.'*
*' Radio broadcasting," says Sarnoff, *4s fre-
quently characterized as the infant prodigy of the
electrical family. But, as is often the case with a
promising youngster, a httle time and experience
have already given it character and it is now making
rapid strides toward maturity. Indeed, in its brief
span of life, the radio industry has had the cleans-
ing effect of several baptisms. Each time it
BERLINER AND RADIO 271
emerged with a better understanding of its problems
and those who have benefited by this experience
gained more vigor and clearer vision.
"The year 1926 will, I believe, show the distin-
guishing marks of radio 's efforts in the direction of
stabilization. The public's preference in radio pro-
grams and radio devices is better understood. The
problems of distribution are clarifying themselves,
and the major problem of the business — broadcast-
ing— is now receiving attention by many capable
minds. The industry no longer has a place for the
mere opportunist. Radio has become a permanent
asset of our daily life and its future prosperity is
assured."
In this wondrous story of the sky-rocket prog-
ress of radio, since Maxwell dreamed, Hertz
materialized and Marconi achieved, Emile Berliner,
inventor of the microphone and the continuous cur-
rent transformer, played worthily and effectively
his part. He is at the age, now, when men indulge
in introspection, and in his reveries he speculates in-
tensively about the spiritual value and ultimate
potentialities of radio. Primarily he considers that
it will become an irresistible force for peace. Men
do not quarrel when they understand one another.
Nations, Berliner thinks, are less likely to fling at
one another's throats if they possess a common de-
nominator in the field of thought interchange. Radio
seems Heaven-sent, to the originator of the micro-
phone, for the purpose of establishing upon earth
for all time and among all peoples the reign of good
wiU.
CHAPTER XXVI
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY
AUGUST THYSSEN— ^'King Thyssen," the
Rhinelanders used to call the late colossus of
German steel and iron — had a philosophy which he
epitomized in the phrase: *'If I rest, I rust." That
terse and alliterative expression of the strenuous
life personifies Emile Berliner. His entire career
has been one long consistent refusal to rust, and
to-day, just over the threshold of his threescore
years and fifteen, he as resolutely eschews the privi-
lege of rest. An uncommonly sturdy physique, a
mental attitude toward men and matters that defies
the ravages of time, and an unquenchable sense of
humor combine to fit him, at seventy-five, for new
attempts at conquests in whichever fields of scien-
tific or humanitarian endeavor he cares to furrow.
His hand, indeed, is actually on a plow that he
expects to trench entirely new ground in the area
of architecture. As it was acoustics that led Ber-
liner into the unexplored regions of the telephone
and the talking machine, it is the science of sound
that has again summoned him to active service on
the firing-line of invention. Emile Berliner, at the
272
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY 273
beginning of the autumn of 1926, is ready to intro-
duce a scientifically worked-out method of making
churches, theaters, opera-houses and assembly halls
of every description acoustically infallible.
He contends that there has never been a time
when architects could guarantee satisfactory acous-
tic qualities in any interior designed for auditory
purposes — whether it be a church, a cathedral, a
concert hall, a railroad waiting-room (in which train
departures or arrivals are announced), a theater,
or a full-sized auditorium in which great gatherings
like national conventions are held. The reason why
poor acoustics can not be combatted mth mathe-
matical precision has never been positively known.
The usual recourse, when an interior is found to be
acoustically defective, is to cover the walls with
sound absorbing material. This weakens the objec-
tionable reverberations or other acoustic impurities,
but also reduces the loudness of the sounds sent
forth by speaker, singer, actor, instrumentalist or
orchestra. Moreover, 'porous walls covered with
cloth or felt are highly insanitary, absorb dust and
germs, and can not be washed, as walls of public
halls require to be, at frequent intervals.
Berliner studied hall acoustics for years. He
is an inveterate theater-goer and music-lover, and
a sharply-trained ear long since made him acute in
the detection of acoustical inadequacies in many of
the temples of entertainment into which the Ameri-
can public is from time to time beguiled. Berliner
274 EMILE BERLINER
eventually came to the conclusion that the cause
of bad acoustics is the hardness or rigidity of the
usual brick or stone walls. He observed that an
auditorium that has wooden walls, especially of pine
or spruce that vibrates freely, also has superior
acoustics. It was this theory that Berliner devel-
oped logically in what he terms ''acoustic tiles.'*
These are composed of porous cement, are as hard
as stone, and yet have the resonance of wood when
vibrated by a tuning fork. They are the fruit of
more than twenty years of research and experiment.
Emile Berliner's remedy for the knotty problem
of hall acoustics consists of a process of cementing
these tiles to the walls of an auditorium over a suffi-
ciently large area, thus combining the hardness and
dignity of a stone wall with the resonance of wooden
panels. The tiles can be molded ornamentally to
please the taste of an architect, or builder, or prop-
erty-owner, and may form the final finish of walls.
They may even be painted without reducing their
acoustic efficiency.
Another method which Berliner has found to be
feasible is to attach flat acoustic cells of wire netting
to a rough finished wall and spread "acoustic ce-
ment" over them. This the inventor has demon-
strated to be thoroughly efficient, acoustically, and
the process lends itself to any treatment applicable
to plain cement walls.
A prominent Roman Catholic churchman, before
whom Berliner demonstrated his invention, repre-
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY 275
sented that in countless communities Catholic
churches have been erected with an eye to nearly
everything except proper hearing facilities. He
was fascinated by the prospect that Berliner's
acoustic tiles offer and expressed the belief that the
princes of the Roman church, then about to assemble
at Chicago for the great twenty-eighth International
Eucharistic Congress, would be deeply interested in
the possibility of enabling a priest, bishop or car-
dinal to celebrate mass in speaking tones and yet
be audible many hundreds of feet away. That is the
boon Berliner believes his acoustic tiles hold out.
Architects and builders who have heard him ex-
pound his theories are persuaded they contain germs
of an important advance in interior construction.
Berliner has converted the basement of his
*' Bureau of Health Education" building on Colum-
bia Road in Washington into a laboratory for con-
ducting practical experiments with acoustic tiles.
Ordinarily the room in question serves the purpose
of a billiard room. Berliner has covered the walls
with his *'loud speaking" tiles. A simple experi-
ment which he is fond of making is to let a visitor
walk a little distance from the door in the hall that
leads into the billiard room. Then Berliner asks
the visitor to listen to his own footsteps. As soon
as the billiard room is entered, the footsteps sound
twice or three times as loud as they sounded in the
hall outside, although the floors of the hall and the
billiard room are of precisely the same material.
276 EMILE BERLINER
Another demonstration that carries simple con-
viction to the lay mind is for Berliner to lead a
caller to a brick wall, and there set a tuning fork to
vibrating. The fork is applied to the wall, but
scarcely any sound is heard. Then the inventor lays
against the brick wall one of his tiles measuring
about eight inches in diameter and three-eighths of
an inch in thickness and touches the vibrative fork
against the face of the tile. There results a ringing
sound as if the tuning fork were applied to the
sound board of a piano.
Berliner asserts there is nothing in the science
of acoustics that challenges the soundness of his
premises or the practical form which he has given
them. He has boldly disregarded previous theories,
and, as an irrepressible scientific iconoclast, has set
out on wholly original paths to achieve a solution.
One major demonstration on a large scale — say, cor-
recting with the use of his tiles the notoriously bad
acoustics in some well-known church or theater —
will, Berliner is confident, establish the practical
utility of his invention. He holds that the preva-
lence of improper hearing facilities in public places
without number the world over is due to imperfect
reasoning on the part of architect and builder and to
the chance they are given to taking — of ''guessing
right." Acoustic tiles are designed to substitute re-
liability for guess-work. Said an architect to Ber-
liner on one occasion: "Acoustics has always been a
gamble." Berliner rejoined: ''You're right; and,
as I'm against all gambling, I want to stop this!"
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY 277
Berliner made the first public presentation of
his solution for coming to grips with the obscure
and baffling problem of hall acoustics in Washington
on October 8, 1925. The occasion was a meeting of
the local chapter of the American Institute of Archi-
tects. In that presence Berliner read the follo\ving
paper :
"The object of this paper is to present to you the
solution of a problem that has at all times appeared
a difficult one to handle.
"Let me first advance the following proposi-
tions :
"1. Every partly or nearly wholly enclosed body
of air assumes a rhythmic vibration which will re-
sound either as a tone or as a so-called reverbera-
tion whenever that air-body is agitated; the larger
the volume of air, the slower the rhythm of the tone
or of the reverberation mil be.
"2. When the agitation is caused by any sound
in the neighborhood of the air-body whose vibration
corresponds with the individual rhythm of the air-
body, then the response will be strong and resonant.
"3. When the agitation is caused by a sound
whose pitch is merely acoustically related to the
rhythm of the air-body, then the resonance or the
reverberation mil be only noticeable.
"4. The harder or the more rigid the walls
which enclose an air-body, the more intense will be
its individual tone or its reverberation.
"In collections of physical apparatus we often
278 EMILE BERLINER
see sets of resonators consisting of hollow brass
balls of different sizes which are provided with open
necks like a bottle and each of which will reverberate
and emit its own resonant tone when that same note
is sounded in the neighborhood, or when air is blown
across the open neck.
''Organ pipes are examples of such resonators
and when made of metal the sound emitted by them
is louder, though sometimes less penetrating or
carrying, than if made of wood.
''Any bottle will illustrate all this by sounding
or singing notes of different pitches into or in front
of it or blowing air across the open neck when the
individual note can be quickly discovered. I have
here a set of dinner gongs consisting of metal bars
mounted over wooden boxes that have openings at
the tops and which are tuned to correspond with the
notes of the bars. When the holes in the boxes are
covered and the bars are struck they emit their notes
but feebly and without resonance. But when the
boxes are open the latter will sound in unison when
the bars are struck and the notes will be ringing
with a beautiful resonance.
"The pitch of every sound depends on the num-
ber of its vibrations, and the limits within which
the human ear can differentiate between different
pitches range from about sixteen vibrations per sec-
ond for the lowest notes to about sixteen thousand
per second for the highest. Below sixteen vibra-
tions the sounds are mere noises or booms and above
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY 279
about sixteen thousand they appear as squeaks or
high whistles if emitted by instruments. While,
however, the average human ear can differentiate
sounds only within about these limitations, the
sounds beyond, either below sixteen thousand or
above sixteen thousand, maintain the law of reso-
nance. This is particularly obvious with low pitched
sounds which will become audible if, for instance,
octaves of their notes are sounded in their neighbor-
hood. We may even assume that large masses of
enclosed air might represent indi\T.dual notes having
only a few vibrations per second, and yet such air-
bodies would emit their rhythmic sound if they were
agitated by sounds whose notes may be related and
are, say, one or more octaves above them. Nor would
this be necessary if such air-bodies were agitated by
mere shocks. A blow by a hammer, a tramp of feet,
or a striking of any hard object will set up the reso-
nance and produce the indi^ddual vibration of that
air-body, though this note may be of a pitch below
the recognizable register of the human ear. It is
then termed reverberation pure and simple.
"The resonators mentioned heretofore, like
organ pipes or dinner gongs, were all of regular
forms, being either tubes or oblong boxes. But we
have in the string instruments of the violin type
hollow boxes of irregular shapes which apparently
do not follow out the propositions advanced. If they
did, then every time a string note was played which
corresponded to the individual note of the air-body
280 EMILE BERLINER
that note would be reenforced by the violin box and
would sound much louder than the rest. On first
consideration it naight be concluded that the irreg-
ular shape of the \iolin or the bass viol was respon-
sible for the absence of individual resonance or
reverberation. This is, however, erroneous, be-
cause a violin made of glass or metal, such as now
and then has been tried, does emit its individual
note and follows our fourth proposition relating to
the question of how rigid the walls are which en-
close the air-body. The note so emitted by a glass
or metal violin of a Stradivarius model corresponds
to a tone having about five hundred vibrations per
second or to the tone of B of the middle tenor reg-
ister.
"Hence it follows that the reason why a violin
does not resonate or reverberate the individual tone
of its enclosed air-body is because its walls are not
rigid enough to permit the development of individ-
ual resonance.
**I will now present some facts which, while ob-
served in an entirely different branch of technology,
have considerable bearing on the problem of hall
acoustics. Many years ago when I began my inves-
tigations which led up to the gramophone, I was
bothered considerably by the resonance of the horns
which I used as sound collectors. Individual notes
would be recorded and would reproduce much louder
than other notes by the same singer or from the
same musical instrument.
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY 281
*'I soon discovered that the disturbing sounds
were always in the same key and that their notes
corresponded to the individual note of the horn used
for recording them. These horns were at that time
usually several feet long and had flared openings,
or so-called bells, from eight to twelve inches in di-
ameter. Their individual note was well mthin the
register of the male voice so that scarcely a song or
a musical composition could be recorded but the dis-
turbance took place. Soprano voices were not so
much affected by it, but the instruments used for
accompanying the voice were. Employing smaller
horns, while doing away with the disturbance, re-
duced the sensitiveness of the contrivance and, since
loud effects were desired, singers would have to
stand close to the horn in order to register their
voices with sufficient power or amplitude.
**I do not recall now what else I did to try to
remedy the trouble, but I finally discovered that
punching a certain number of small holes into the
sides of the horn would destroy the individual reso-
nance of the horns and obviate the disturbance.
''The modus operandi consisted in punching
three or four rows of small holes, each row of about
six holes, lengthwise, along the horn into the mate-
rial of which the horn was made, generally common
tinplate. This would much reduce the individual
resonance. Then holes would be gradually added,
the resonance tried again until it would have ceased.
After this point was reached the effect of adding
282 EMILE BERLINER
further holes would merely weaken the capacity of
the horn for transmitting or deflecting sound
against the recording diaphragm.
''Such perforated, or as we used to call them,
ventilated horns faithfully transmitted all sounds
equally well to the recording diaphragm and per-
mitted perfect recording, and with all larger horns
perforations have been employed ever since.
"But when horns of these sizes were employed
in reproducing machines the disturbance of individ-
ual resonance was not noticed because the pressure
of the sound vibrations came from the diaphragm
outward and the cause of the resonance which is
rhythmic elastic compression of enclosed air did
not occur.
''When about twenty years ago I prepared this
address originally, it occurred to me that the theories
of individual resonance as advanced in the four
propositions with which I began this paper might
be further tested if I tried horns of pyramidical in-
stead of conical shape such as are used in cabinet
talking machines. In such horns there are four
triangular plates of wood or metal which form a
sound chamber. Their sides are not rigid as in a
conical horn, but semi-elastic, each side forming a
panel capable of freely vibrating within certain lim-
its, depending on the thickness of the wood or other
material of which they consisted.
"My anticipations that such a horn would ex-
hibit reduced individual resonance in recording, or
EMILE BEELINER TO-DAY 283
none at all, proved true and confirms the fourth
proposition that individual resonance or reverbera-
tion of enclosed air-bodies depends on the greater
or lesser rigidity of the walls which enclose the air.
**Let me now take a brief survey of what we find
in large rooms, halls or auditoriums, considering
their acoustic conditions.
''What is demanded is that sounds from the plat-
form of the speaker or singer or performer should
be heard loudly and distinctly over all the auditor-
ium. In particular boomy reverberations should be
absent, because they not only impair distinctness,
but jumble and destroy the evenness of rendition
so that some portions of a speech are heard dis-
tinctly and others not.
''It is an old experience that a hall when empty
may exhibit marked reverberation but, after the
audience has filed in, the disturbance has disap-
peared ; at the same time, however, the resonance of
the sound of the speaker or performer is greatly
weakened. What has happened is this. The side of
the auditorium taken by the acoustically elastic
wooden floor has been covered with a mass of flesh
and clothing which absorb the vibrations striking
against them and therefore impair the resonance of
the voices or notes themselves.
"Or an empty and unfinished room may exhibit
a fine natural resonance without any disturbing re-
verberation, but after it has been carpeted, and
hangings put in, sounds are muffled. This accounts
284 EMILE BERLINER
for the fact that a piano or a violin tried out in the
bare and unfurnished rooms at the music dealers
and appearing of brilliant tone will often sound un-
satisfactory when it is being played in the furnished
home of the purchaser.
*'The worst examples of bad acoustics occur in
fine old cathedrals and in the large waiting-rooms of
magnificent railroad stations. It is next to imposs-
ible to understand the sermons or the strenuous
efforts of the criers when calling out trains. There
are larger churches built of brick or stone in which
the acoustics are not so very bad, but very few in
which they are very good. At best it requires care-
ful voice handling on the part of the minister, unless
he be a natural elocutionist, to make himself easily
understood. When a newly built hall is found to
have poor acoustics the remedies applied, while
helping in some respects, usually impair the speak-
ing voice trying to reach the distant part of the
audience as w^ell.
*'But there are within my knowledge two large
auditoriums the acoustic properties of which are not
only not bad but exceptionally fine, and these are
the Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, seating eight thou-
sand people, and the Wagner Theater in Bayreuth,
with a seating capacity of about two thousand.
"I shall never forget the impression which I re-
ceived when our traveling party one summer day
inspected the Bayreuth Theater at a time when no
performances were given. After we had entered I
EMILE BERLINER TO-DAY 285
began to comment on the seating capacity and the
simplicity of the designs. Every word I uttered in
a subdued voice echoed into my ears with wonderful
resonance. It was not the boomy reverberation one
notices in cathedrals but a true resonance which
increased the volume of the voice without in the
slightest degree changing its quality. And no mat-
ter in what part of the theater I tried it the reso-
nance was beautiful and perfect everywhere.
**In the very large auditorium at Salt Lake City
words spoken in an ordinary voice at the speaker's
platform are distinctly understood at distant places,
and of course the musical results are always superb.
**Both these great halls are built of wood, or
their interiors at least show wooden walls, and in
the light of my fourth proposition it leads to the
conclusion that the elastic or vibratory character of
wooden auditorium walls is mostly responsible for
their good acoustical results.
''There are, however, several objections to the
using of wooden walls in large halls or auditoriums.
They are inflammable and they lack architectural
dignity. They do not impress with that feeling of
permanence which stone or marble walls, or cement
imitations of these, convey to the discerning mind.
*'In the new development which I bring before
you to-day a compromise has been effected by cover-
ing walls ivith elastic cement tiles and which have
the acoustic resonance of wood. This is accom-
plished, first, by mixing a porous material like
286 EMILE BERLINER
asbestos, pumice or sawdust with the cement, and
second, by shaping these tiles so that when joined to
the wall they form vibratory diaphragms. At pres-
ent the acoustic tiles are eight inches in diameter
and consist of square center portions about a
quarter-inch thick and projecting rims by which they
are cemented to the wall. "With substances like
asbestos and pumice the tiles could be made of china
clay or of terra cotta and be baked in fire as a real
tile is.
''Acoustic tiles may have any surface grain de-
sired and it is not unlikely that grouping together
larger and smaller tiles on the same set of walls
may result in increased resonance for certain defi-
nite purposes.
''Existing churches, theaters or concert halls
with defective acoustics may, I think, be readily cor-
rected by covering sections of their interiors with
acoustic tiles to a sufficient height for catching and
reflecting the voices of speakers or singers as well
as the tones of instruments. ' '
CHAPTER XXVII
AN INVENTOB^S HUMAN SIDE
X-RAYING the man to-day, at threescore and
fifteen, with so many achievements to his
credit that ahnost any one of them would assure
him place in the Hall of Fame, it is plain that inven-
tive success came to Emile Berliner because of three
qualities indispensable in the scientific explorer —
driving force, inconquerable optimism and contempt
for failure. Berliner is a stubborn man, and stub-
bornness, in an inventor, is pure gold.
''Above all," he once said, "the inventor must
have the patience and fortitude to face failures —
hundreds of them, if necessary — and still keep on.
He must be ready to average ninety-nine failures for
one success or one encouraging development. He
must work hard, and be content to slave for months
at a time without registering apparent progress. He
must not be disheartened by the necessity to travel
over the same ground again and again, or by the
sudden necessity to detour. Therein lies the key to
victory — never-ending application. The idea that
an inventor is necessarily a genius is entirely fallac-
ious. Genius for invention is only the capacity for
287
288 EMILE BERLINER
concentration. Given that, plus the power of ob-
servation, and you have the raw material for a suc-
cessful inventor."
Berliner has frittered away an amazingly small
amount of time on the trifles of modern existence.
He tabulates work as his recreation, though he con-
fesses to one play-time hobby — billiards. He attri-
butes to the creative atmosphere of America his
passion for accomplishing things. ''In the United
States," Berliner says, "you are w^hat you have
done/^ He considers that he was richly blessed in
having been deprived of too many advantages in
early life. ''I once knew a man," the inventor likes
to recall, "who said he gave his son every possible
advantage except one — he could not give him a poor
father."
Intellectual curiosity was implanted in Berliner
in youth. At the only school he ever attended, Wolf-
enbiittel, in Hanover province, which he left when
he was fourteen years old, his teachers dubbed him
a hermit "because I was so much alone — thinking."
All his life he has cultivated the tedious art of tak-
ing pains. He has a card-index mind which endows
him with a talent for sorting out ideas and for
winnowing theoretical chaff from practical grain.
He possesses an extraordinarily concentrated eye-
sight— a physical vision which supplements a men-
tal insight and forms a combination making for
unusual power of penetration. Unlike most inven-
tors, Berliner is an able business man. He made
AN INVEXTOR^S HTMAX SIDE 289
shrewd investments, largely in District of Columbia
land, with the early fruits of his scientific successes.
He has always preferred looking after his own
affairs, and has a passion for promptness and order-
liness in connection with them.
Asked to name Emile Berliner's principal per-
sonal characteristic, the average man or woman who
knows him unhesitatingly says: '' Generosity." A
fortune came to him relatively soon in life, and it
grew rapidh'. His benefactions have always kept
pace with his prosperity, though they were not, and
are not, of the sort that attract the light of publicity.
Berliner has devoted a king's ransom to his child
health work.
BerUner bubbles with good nature. He would
rather perpetrate a witticism than an opinion, and
prefers telling or hearing good stories to holding
post-mortems on his scientific past. To many au
aspiring young man Berliner has said: ** Never
dwell on a success. Eeach out for the next ! " He is
a modest man. For more than ten years family and
friends tried in vain to induce him to compile his
autobiography. He thinks autobiography is the
stage of life a man reaches when he begins to take
himself seriously, and Berliner has always warded
off that s^^nptom of dotage, as he calls it. "Within
these pages is the only account of the inventor's
career for which Berliner has ever taken the time to
assemble essential data. "Wlien friends become ad-
ulatory about his discoveries, he dismisses these as
290 EMILE BERLiyrER
''just good guesses." He wanted to call this volume
Guessing Right. Berliner tenaciously refused to
become the lion of festivities which prominent
Washington friends wanted to arrange in honor of
the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth on May 20,
1926. When the day came, he stole away to Swarth-
more College, where a favorite granddaughter. Miss
Gertrude Sanders, is an undergraduate, and spent
the diamond jubilee with her and nine other co-eds
at lunch and on the Quaker campus.
Once Berliner met an old friend in a Washington
optician's shop after a lapse of many years. He
banteringly berated the man for ** neglecting" him
and never taking the trouble to reknit the ties of
other times. The friend, a little flustered, resorted
to the ruse of changing the conversation by admir-
ing a beautiful pigeon-blood ruby ring which Ber-
liner wore. ''Emile," he said, "that's a handsome
ring you've got there. You promised me that!"
Berliner replied that he was sorry he couldn't part
with the jewel, as it was a present, many years pre-
vious, from Mrs. Berliner. A couple of days later
the inventor's old friend was astonished to receive
from a fashionable jeweler's shop an exact duplicate
of the ruby ring with Berliner's compliments.
When Berliner Avas launching his pure-milk
crusade in Washington, he was at more or less in-
cessant war mth the local doctors. The Medical
Society objected in particular to his gratis circula-
tion of The Bottle-Fed Baby, on the ground that it
Mr. Berlixer in Fkoxt of Microphoxe at WEC Broadcastixc;
Statiox, V\'AsnixGTOx, D. C. The Author of This Volume Since
1923 Has Broadcast "The Political Situation in Washington
To-night"' Weekly through the Microphoxe Here Shown
'A
2 o
K 2
p Pi
o H
O 02
C3 ><
J >^
AN INVENTOR >S HUMAN SIDE 291
gave young mothers so much and so sound advice on
the rearing of infants that it was almost as potent
as an apple a day — it kept the doctor away. Finally
the Medical Society decided to invite Berliner to a
joint conference at which the merits and demerits of
The Bottle-Fed Bahy would be thoroughly discussed.
^'We shall name five delegates," said the medics
to Berliner, **and you may name five."
**I don't need but three," the inventor-humani-
tarian rejoined.
The conference was duly convened. Berliner's
trio of protagonists consisted of Doctor George
Martin Kober, Professor of Hygiene and Dean of
the Medical Faculty of Georgetown University,
Washington; Doctor Ernest Charles Schroeder,
Veterinarian and Expert on Animal Industry in the
Department of Agriculture; and Mrs. E. R. Grant,
Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Child
Health Education of the National Tuberculosis
Association.
Berliner introduced his **big three" to the Med-
ical Society ''trial board" and reeled off their re-
spective ranks, titles and scientific stations in life
with impressive solemnity.
Going through the motions of being staggered by
this galaxy of talent, the spokesman of the doctors
ejaculated :
''Why, Mr. Berliner, you leave me speechless!"
"Well, Doctor," Berliner replied, "we expected
to render you speechless with our argument, but not
292 EMILE BERLINER
with our mere presence. Are we to consider the
matter settled without conference?"
When the World War broke out in 1914, Emile
Berliner, though of German origin, made prompt
avowal of his unqualified pro-Ally sympathies.
He has always had an amused contempt for the pre-
tensions of the more arrogant type of German,
especially of the titled aristocrat and military breed.
Menials in Germany, when they want to fawn upon
a superior, frequently address a vain and suscep-
tible male as ''Herr Baron" (Mr. Baron). To-day
Emile Berliner is fond of bestoudng that mock title
of nobility upon his intimate friends, especially if
they understand German.
The inventor of the microphone, despite his Ger-
man blood, is a tireless spinner of yarns illustrative
of Teuton pretensions and foibles.
''A Yankee millionaire once was motoring
through Berlin," Berliner narrates, ''and drove
helter-skelter through Brandenburg Gate (Berlin's
Arc de Triomphe at the head of Unter den Linden).
A policeman stopped the American on the other side
of the gate. 'You're fined five hundred marks,' the
cop said. 'What for?' asked the Yankee. 'For using
a part of this arch reserved exclusively for the
kaiser.' The American pulled out his pocketbook
and gave the policeman one thousand marks. 'I said
five hundred marks,' the Scliutzmann explained. 'I
heard you the first time,' the man from the United
States said, 'but I'm coming back!' "
AN INVENTOR >S HUMAN SIDE 293
Berliner was once asked what impressed him
most about pre-war Berlin, when sabers rattled
more conspicuously than in this democratic day
on the Spree. *'The Prussian mounted police," he
replied. '^I liked the intelligent look on the face of
the horses!" The republican police has improved.
A friend, during this golden jubilee year of the
invention of the Bell telephone, asked Emile Ber-
liner if he thought the telephone is now perfect.
"No," the maker of the transmitter chuckled.
''I've got three more inventions up my sleeve — one
is a scheme to prevent your getting the wrong num-
ber; another, which '11 prevent you from being cut
off, and a third, perhaps the most important of
all, which will prevent johnnies and flappers from
talking at a stretch more than twenty minutes dur-
ing the busy hours of the forenoon!"
Berliner says he has only one regret about the
invention of the gramophone. He thinks it ought to
have been devised so that records couldn 't be played
after ten o 'clock at night, except for dancing.
In his old home on Columbia Road, in Washing-
ton, Berliner once had a large golden eagle hanging
in the front hall. A gullible visitor was inquisitive
about the gleaming bird's origin.
''That," said Berliner, with great gravity, "is
the original American eagle shot by George Wash-
ington in the Rocky Mountains. He gave it to his
bodyguard, who was a cousin of Uncle Tom, and for
years it hung in Uncle Tom's cabin. One day Har-
294 EMILE BERLINER
riet Beecher Stowe visited Uncle Tom, and out of
gratitude for having been written up by Mrs. Stowe,
he gave her the eagle. Mrs. Stowe took it to New
York and after her death her effects were sold at
auction. It was bought by a wholesale feather mer-
chant, and one day I bought it from him!"
Berliner has an uncommonly good memory — bet-
ter, he says, than the absent-minded German pro-
fessor who said: ''There are three things I can
never remember: names, faces, and the other thing
I have completely forgotten!"
Although he has been away from the Fatherland
fifty-six years, Berliner still speaks a classic Ger-
man, and can quote Goethe and Schiller like a Herr
Professor. AVhen the war depopularized the use of
the kaiser's jawbreaking language in America, a
German-American friend asked Berliner what the
latter was going to substitute for Gesundheit
(Health), the ancient German greeting when one
hears another sneeze.
"Say 'Liberty!' " Berliner suggested. He acted
on his own proposal, and throughout the war when
anybody in the Berliner household sneezed, some-
body exclaimed: "Liberty!"
Berliner considered Luther Burbank one of the
outstanding men of our day. Once the inventor of
the microphone described the union of a certain
eminent American couple, the fairer of whom is in-
incomparably more charming, as "a Luther Burbank
marriage — the union of a 'lemon' and a 'peach.' "
AN INVENTOR'S HUMAN SIDE 295
Hardly a day passes that Emile Berliner is not
asked his recipe for keeping eternally youthful in
spirit and point of view, looking young out of tune
\dth his age, and for the almost boyish springiness
that marks his every step and gesture. He claims
never to have sipped at the rejuvenating fountain
of Ponce de Leon, or had resort to any of the
standard elixirs of life, but to have adhered, rather,
to six whimsical "rules" of his o^vn fashioning:
1. Select healthy parents.
2. Follow Doctor Pat's advice to liis friend
Mike: "Ni^^er have anything on yer mind but ver
hat."
3. Keep away from raw milk, from raw cream
and from butter made of unpasteurized cream.
4. Get all the sleep your body seems to need.
5. Seek the association of persons younger than
yourself.
6. Don't carry grievances — cultivate cheerful-
ness, kindliness and smiles.
Because like "Bobs" in Eudyard Kipling's bar-
rack-room ballad, " 'e does not advertise," Emile
Berliner's virtues as father, friend and man are
those most often acclaimed in the immediate circle
of his acquaintances and admirers. They know of
the love he has lavished upon a large family ; of the
pious devotion with which he honors the memory of
his mother; of the unostentatious and unrecorded
charities he is constantly rendering; of his aggres-
sive public spirit; of his fondness for old friends,
especially the comrades of his struggling days.
296 EMILE BERLINER
They know, in particular, of the sympathetic back-
ground and sustaining influence wliich have been
vouchsafed Emile Berliner by a well-regulated
home, over which the companion of forty-five years
still presides. They know what the combination of
wife and fireside has meant to the restless inventor.
They know the joyous pride he has unceasingly
taken in the six children that Cora Adler Berliner
bore him — all of them now grown up and married,
with a glorious brood of seven grandchildren in
whose company Emile Berliner derives endless con-
firmation of his theory that advancing age is most
successfully resisted amid the environment of
' ' flaming youth. ' '
CHAPTER XXVIII
BERLINER PEERS INTO THE FUTURE
EMILE BERLINER does not believe that we
already inhabit the best of all possible worlds.
He has survived to see it become an immeasurably
happier place of abode, spiritually, esthetically and
scientifically, than any planet the ancients could pos-
sibly have envisaged. In that development of
human well-being, Berliner has had a share, as these
pages have set out. But the inventor-humanitarian,
whose optimism and idealism are always tinctured
with realism and conunon sense, has an abiding
faith that if he could survey the terrestrial scene a
hundred years hence, he would find mankind as far
in advance of present-hour progress as the America
of to-day fabulously outstrips the pioneer era from
which it sprang.
Yet, paradoxical as it may sound, Emile Ber-
liner's firmest conclusion mth reference to the
future is: "1 do not hiotv." He contends that "we
know only so far as we can demonstrate." He
points out that those who have demonstrated most
feel, as a rule, that they have not penetrated very
far; that, in a sense they have only scratched the
297
298 EMILE B?]RLIXER
surface of the inscrutable soil they essayed to till.
Berliner, in a word, holds that the true scientist is,
intuitively, the least dogmatic of men. The word
cocksureness is not in his lexicon.
AMien Berliner is asked for his "philosophy of
life," as he frequently is, he takes recourse in James
Clerk Maxwell's Atoms. In that essay, the English
mathematician who blazed the trail that led to radio,
said :
"Science is incompetent to reason upon the crea-
tion of matter itself out of nothing. We have
reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties
when we have admitted that, because matter can not
be eternal and self-existent, it must have been
created."
"Whenever I scan that prescient passage in
Maxwell," says Berliner, "and realize that the
greatest mathematical physicist of the nineteenth
century thus had to admit the fallibility of human
logic, I cease to worry about the infinite." Berliner
has a personal creed that is based to a considerable
extent on the Maxwellian theory. As to religion,
Berliner inclines to Elbert Hubbard's view that
"mf-re dogma is a hard substance that forms in a
soft brain."
But the maker of the microphone believes that
religion is an indispensable factor in life because
its institutional feature — the church — is the only
agency that has for its primary object the pre-
sentation and propagation of ideals. Without ideals.
PEEES INTO THE FUTURE 299
Berliner asserts, ''civilized society would disin-
tegrate. ' '
One of the calls echoing urgently from the future
to the present, in Emile Berliner's judgment, is for
a program of popular education in sex psychology',
i. e., the understanding, by men, of the minds of
women. He considers such a program fundamental
to the happiness of the human race. If the sexes
understood each other better, greater unity of pur-
pose ■would come out of willing compromises, and
marriage would be less of a gamble.
"Marriage," Berliner affirms, "is a mutual ac-
commodation between the natural instinct to mate
and the laws of society that are necessary for the
protection of children. Happy marriages are un-
doubtedly the best solutions of the mating instinct
and afford the most solid foundation for civilized
society. Unfortunately, economic conditions con-
tinuously operate against early marriages craved by
Nature. Human society, of course, has been grap-
pling with the problem, in all its multifarious rami-
fications, since the da^^l of Time, and demanded a
solution not yet vouchsafed the children of men.
Only in recent times has youth apparently revolted
openly against a system it finds intolerable, claim-
ing the right to love as youth's natural preroga-
tive."
"What is your remedy for this state of affairs?"
Berliner was asked while this story of his life was
in the making.
300 EMILE BERLINER
** Probably Ingersoll had the right answer," Ber-
liner replied. ''Many years ago I discussed this rid-
dle of the universe — sex — with the great agnostic.
Ingersoll said: 'Some day you scientific men will
furnish a simple means of birth control. That will
help to bring about a solution of the sex question.'
Ingersoll placed his finger on the strategic feature
of the problem. To-day the time which he foresaw
has almost arrived."
On the eternal issue of how a world peopled with
men and women, in whom belligerency and covetous-
ness are dormant, if not active, traits, can abolish
war, Emile Berliner holds stimulating views. He
believes the international millennium is much more
likely to be promoted by language than by leagues.
"A prime means to 'end war,' " he says, "would in
my opinion be the adoption of a universal language
which every schoolchild in creation would learn.
Literature in that language would then bo fostered
in every land. Radio would speak a tongue under-
stood around the globe, and could carry it to the
uttermost corners. I believe that English, with
reformed and simplified spelling, would make an
excellent universal language. This would lead the
nations readily into a common channel of thought,
would make every mind accessible to universal
ideals, and would enable every great writer to dis-
seminate his ideals in all directions. The fraterni-
zation of the nations would automatically ensue and
continue. There would be no more 'foreigners' or
PEERS INTO THE FUTURE 301
'aliens' in a world inhabited by men and women
who talked to each other in a language common to
all."
Berliner contends that such thoughts as these are
not the dreamings of an impractical idealist. **0n
March 23, 1926," he points out, ''the Associated
Press carried the following striking news: 'Com-
plete annihilation of space for the human voice is the
ultimate aim of engineers of the American Tele-
phone and Telegraph Company, now perfecting a
commercial transatlantic telephone service. They
believe that ultimately men will be able to talk be-
tween any two points on the face of the earth.*
Thus, we see, the engineers are doing their part. Let
the dreamers and the idealists — and the philolo-
gists— ^now do theirs."
His contemporaries often seek light and leading
from Emile Berliner on the puzzle of the life
hereafter. "Intermolecular space," he replies, "ex-
ists between the molecules or atoms and may par-
take and embody in its ether something of the
activities of the molecules. Under this entirely
scientific assumption a so-called astral body, a body
of ether, might remain after the dissolution or scat-
tering of the molecules of the human body. This, I
believe, as a theory, might presage some individual
activity after death."
Emile Berliner, as he looks down the endless cor-
ridor of the future, foresees a world in which women
through educated motherhood will play a tremen-
302 EMTLE BERLINER
dously increasing role. In his own realm of science,
in particular, he visualizes them as factors bound
one day to serve mankind as effectually as men
scientists in the long past have done. That women,
with rare exceptions like Madame Curie, hitherto
have not shone scientifically Berliner attributes
primarily to their lack of educational opportunity,
rather than to inherent incapacity. Actuated by
that conviction Berliner in 1908, with the coopera-
tion of the American Association of University
Women, founded ''The Sarah Berliner Research
Fellowship." It was established in memory of the
inventor's mother, a woman of parts, who, of course,
had not had a college education herself — women in
those days, neither in Germany nor in America,
even having been admitted to university courses —
but a woman who was decidedly intellectual in her
interests.
It was largely at the instigation of Mrs. Chris-
tine Ladd Franklin, wife of Fabian Franklin, and
one of the first women to complete the work required
for the doctor's degree at Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, that Emile Berliner was induced to found the
Fellowship. It is open to all American women hold-
ing the degree of Doctor of Philosophy or Doctor of
Science, who give promise of distinction in the sub-
ject to which they are devoting themselves. The
Fellowship is available for research in physics,
chemistry or biology. The committee on fellowships
of the Association of University Women is the com-
PEERS INTO THE FUTURE 303
mittee on awards. The university women in charge
of the Sarah Berliner Fund give explicit recognition
to those candidates for the award, who can carry on
research and at the same time might have the privi-
lege of giving one or more courses of lectures at
some university or other institution of learning.
The value of the Fellowship is more than twelve
hundred dollars a year.
Professor Agnes L. Rogers, of the department of
education at Bryn Mawr College, who is now chair-
man of the Committee on Fellowships of the Amer-
ican Association of University Women, says :
*'Mr. Berliner's foundation was one of the first,
if not the first, fellowships for women in the United
States and the very first designated for work in
science. As it has always been the largest fellow-
ship for women in this country until 1926, when the
Guggenheim Fellowships were founded, amounting
to twenty-five hundred dollars each, the women who
have held the Berliner Fellowship have been very
distinguished. It has bound to our Association of
University Women some of the leaders among re-
search workers in this country, and we are exceed-
ingly proud of what we have been able to accomplish
through Mr. Berliner's vision and generosity.
*'It should be remembered that Mr. Berliner
made this fellowship available when woman's posi-
tion in colleges and universities was far from being
so assured as now, and when their power to conduct
research in any field was questioned. His faith has,
304
EMILE BERLINER
I believe, through the Sarah Berliner Fellowship,
encouraged many -women to high endeavor and has
enheartened them to pursue their interest in science
in spite of an atmosphere of what was as recently as
eighteen years ago almost universal discourage-
ment."*
Berliner, of course, is radiantly optimistic with
regard to the future possibilities of the inventions
■svith which his name is indissolubly linked — the tele-
phone, the gramophone and radio. Literally, he con-
siders those possibilities illimitable, and progress in
their realization, Berliner predicts will be rapid be-
yond all popular expectation
The Bell Telephone System in 1926 had to in-
crease its share capitalization to one billion one
hundred million dollars — making it the largest cor-
poration in the world — to keep pace with the in-
creased growth of telephony.
*SAiiAH Beslesee Eeseaech axd Lectuke Fellowship
Tear Recipient of Award
University
1909 Caroline McGill
1911 Edna Carter
1912 Gertrude Rand
1913 Elizabeth R. Laird
1914 Ethel X. Bro-svne
1915 Janet T. Howell
1916 Mildred West Loring
1917 Carlotta J. Maurj
(Marjorie O'Donnell
1918 ^Cornelia Kennedy
1919 Olive Swezy
1920 Mrs. Helene Connet WilsomBaltimore
1921 Francis G. Wick Various Collegea
1922 Ruth B. Holland Various Colleges
1923 Helen C. Coombs Yonkers
1924 LeoHora Neuffer Cincinnati
1925 Hope Hibbard Various CoDegea
1926 Helen Downes Various Collegea
Missouri
Vassar
Brm Mawr
Mt. Holyoke
Columbia
Brrn Mawr
Johns Hopkins
Hastings-on-HudBon
New York
Minnesota
Minnesota
Selected
Subject
Anatomy
Physics
Biology
Physics
Biology
Physics
Psychology
Paleantology
C Geology
I Nutrition
Parasitology
Physiology
Physics, himina
Biology
Physiology
Chemistry
Zoology
Chemifltrj
PEERS INTO THE FUTURE 305
It was only in 1926, too, that the medical world
was electrified by news head-lined in the metropoli-
tan journals of the country as follows: '* Talking
Machine Disks Trap Heart Beats." Then it was
narrated that for the first time in the history of
medical science the sound of heart heats ivas, re-
corded on talking-machine records and reproduced
for a class of physicians. A hundred doctors from
all parts of the United States and from Canada
gathered at the Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston on June eighth and listened simultaneously
through individual stethoscopes to heart beats en-
graved on talking-machine records. The sounds
were recorded and reproduced in so minute detail
that they served for study in diagnosis. The inven-
tion is expected to be of far-reaching significance to
both the medical profession and the general public.
The recording and reproducing devices were devel-
oped by Doctor Richard C. Cabot, of Boston, noted
physician and educator, and Doctor Clarence Gam-
ble, of Philadelphia, and the results cro^vn eighteen
years of study and experimentation.
Radio, in Berliner's judgment, will revolutionize
the future art of oratory. It will divest public
speaking of the purely flamboyant and clothe it mth
a dignity born not so much of emotion-stirring elo-
quence as of conviction-carrjdng statement of fact
and presentation of argument.
*'My views on this score," says Berliner, ''were
put more forcefully than I could express them wheq
306 EMILE BERLINER
Vice-President Dawes spoke at Washington on June
4, 1926, at the 'finals' of the third national oratorical
contest of the high school children of the United
States.
** 'The radio,' Mr. Dawes pointed out, 'has inter-
posed itself between the orator and our largest
crowds — crowds which run into millions in num-
ber— while the exceptional human voice unaided by
this device can make itself heard at best by only from
five to twenty thousand people. But a fact of immense
significance is that each man of the larger number
listening to an orator over the radio listens as an in-
dividual thinking man and not as one of an impres-
sionable crowd. As scientists have pointed out, when
a gathering of people is in the physical presence of
an orator and under the spell of his eloquence and
personal magnetism, the emotions can be so aroused
as not only to interfere with individual mental
activity, but at times absolutely to destroy it. The
amalgamation of people into crowds seems to create
a living organism possessing a definite character
and definite mental attributes, one of which is the
almost total lack of reasoning power. All this means
that instead of reaching the mind through the emo-
tions, a man speaking over the radio must reach the
emotions through the mind, if he is to reach them
at all. It means that the orator of the future, to hold
and impress his audience, must largely abandon ap-
peal to emotion and confine himself to reason forci-
bly expressed and logically arranged. It means
PEERS INTO THE FUTURE 307
inevitably that the oratory of the future is to he the
oratory of condensed reason, as distinguished from
demagoguery with its appeals to prejudice and emo-
tion., This fact is fraught with tremendous sig-
nificance to the future public welfare.' "
For whatever good fortune has come to Emile
Berliner in a life of constructive contribution to
civilization, he gives devout and humble thanks to
the spirit of America. In our land of untrammeled
opportunity he found himself. From out of its
boundless possibilities, with a confidence born of his
own experience, he foreshadows that still greater
things will come for the enrichment not only of the
country of his adoption, but for the world which it
leads.
In honor of a friend, who was celebrating a sev-
entieth birthday anniversary, Emile Berliner, con-
templating the inevitable fate of mortals, once drew
a fantastic picture of the eventide of men and
women who have played worthily the roles assigned
them on Life's fitful stage. He wrote this finale:
**And when the end cometh they shall walk down
a flower-bedecked slope and meet the smiling old
ferryman at the foot of the hill who will beckon them
to follow him to the blissful abodes, where dwell the
serene and gentle souls that preceded them, into the
realms of peace, to the glades where fairies sing
enchanting melodies, into a world of sunlit golden
dreams.
308 EMILE BERLINER
''There they shall listen to the music of the
spheres filling all with their bewitching harmonies.
Time has lost its measure and its meaning, space is
pierced by the spiritual eye.
*'And, beholding a world of splendor and of
glories, from the watch towers of eternity, glisten-
ing in the tremulous rays of celestial fires, they shall
hear the far cry of a venerable Muezzin :
" 'Peace he with you, fighting is, over, and all is
well!' "
THE END
APPENDICES
I
BEELINER'S CAVEAT DESCRIBING THE
MICROPHONE*
Filed in the United States Patent Office, April 14, 1877_
SPECIFICATION
PART I. The following is a description of my
newly-invented apparatus for transmitting
sound of any kind by means of a wire or any other
conductor of electricity, to any distance.
It is a fact and a scientific principle that objects
near each other which are charged with electricity
of the same polarity repel each other. It is also a
fact that if at a point of contact between two ends
of a galvanic current, the pressure between both
sides of the contact becomes weakened, the current
passing becomes less intense, as, for instance, if an
operator on a Morse instrument does not press down
the key with a certain firmness, the sounder at the
receiving instrument does work much weaker than if
*See page 90.
309
310 EMILE BERLINER
the full pressure of the hand would have been used.
Based on these two facts I have constructed a sim-
ple apparatus for transmitting sound along a line
of a galvanic current in the following manner:
Part II. In the drawing accompanying this
caveat B is a metal plate well fastened to the wooden
box or frame A, but able to vibrate if sound is
uttered against it or in the neighborhood of said
plate. Against the plate, and touching it, is the
metal ball C, which rests on the bar or stand F and
presses against the plate, which pressure however
can be regulated by the thumb-screw D attached to
the ball. By making the plate vibrate the pressure
at the point of contact A becomes weaker or
stronger as often as vibrations occur and according
to which side of the plate the sound comes from.
Part III. If a current of electricity passes
through the plate and the point of contact or vice
versa, a repulsive movement mil take place be-
tween the plate and the ball because both are
charged with the same kind of electricity. This
force of repulsion may be weakened or strengthened
by varying the strength of the current.
Part IV. By placing now, as in the drawing is
shown, one such instrument in the station fig. 1 and
another instrument in the station fig. 2 both situ-
ated on the same voltaic current (as shown by the
wire connections following the arrows), sound ut-
tered against the plate of the instrument fig. I will
be reproduced by the plate of the instrument fig. 2 ;
APPENDICES 311
for as the vibrations of the transmitter fig.l caused
by the sound will alternately weaken and strengthen
the current as many times as vibrations occur, so mil
also the force of repulsion at the point in the receiver
be alternately weakened and strengthened as many
times accordingly and mil therefore cause the plate
to vibrate at the same rate and measure. The latter
vibrations being communicated to the surrounding
air, the same kind of sound as uttered against the
transmitter fig. 1 will be reproduced at the receiver
fig. 2, or in as many other receiving instruments as
are situated within the same voltaic circuit.
Part V. It is not material that the plate should
be of metal; same can be of any material able to
vibrate if only at the point of contact suitable ar-
rangement is made so that the current passes
through that point. The plate may be of any shape
or size and may be substituted by a wire. The ball
too may be substituted by any other metallic point,
surface, wire, etc. There may be more than one
point of contact becoming affected by the same vi-
brations, and either side or both may vibrate, al-
though it is preferable that only one side should
vibrate.
Part "VT. If the uttered sound is so strong that
its vibrations will cause a breaking of the current
at the point or points of contact in the transmitter,
then the result at the receiving instruments will be
a tone much louder but not as distinct in regard to
articulation.
312 EMILE BERLINER
Part VII. What I claim to have invented is, —
1, An instrument situated within an electric
circuit having two or more ends of the current
brought in contact with each other, which points of
contact can be loosened or tightened by vibrating
one or both sides of each contact, thus diminishing
and increasing the amount of electricity passing
through the contacts as many times as vibrations
occur,
2, An instrument like this one described situ-
ated within a voltaic circuit and having two or more
ends of this circuit brought in contact with each
other, at which point or points of contact exists a
force of repulsion, caused by equal polarity, which
force can be increased or decreased by increasing
or decreasing the strength of the current passing
through the points of contact.
3. An apparatus consisting of a metal plate able
to vibrate in contact with a metal ball, each of
which within the same voltaic or galvanic circuit, so
that if, by vibrating the plate, the pressure at the
point of contact gets loosened or tightened, the
amount of electricity passing in the current is dimin-
ished or increased, as described.
4. Same instrument to be used as a transmitter
of sound-waves, by uttering sound against or in the
neighborhood of the said plate or its mechanical
equivalent, thus vibrating the plate and diminish-
ing the amount of electricity passing as many times
and as much as the vibrations will loosen the pre^r
sure of contact, as described.
APPENDICES 313
5. Such a similar apparatus to be used as a re-
ceiver or reproducer of sound-waves by allowing an
electric current consisting of waves which are pro-
duced as described in Claim No. 4 to pass through
the point of contact thus increasing or decreasing
the force of repulsion already existing between the
plate and the ball at the contact when a current is
passing. The plate therefore being thrown into vi-
brations as many times and with an intensity in ac-
cordance with the number of waves and their intens-
ity, the air surrounding the receiving plates will
also be vibrated and reproduce a sound similar to
the one uttered in the transmitting instrument, as
described.
6. A combination of two or more of such instru-
ments situated on the same voltaic circuit or current
of electricity so that if one plate is vibrated all the
others will vibrate at the same rate and measure,
as described.
7. A system of telephony for the purpose of
transmitting sounds to any distance by means of a
wire or other conductor of electricity, as described.
II
FIXAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE BLAKE
TRAXSMITTEE
[Prepared far the Archives of the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company]
IX Xovember, 1878, I left "Washington and pro-
ceeded to Xew York, where the BeU Telephone
Company had temporary headquarters at Xos. 66
and 68 Eeade Street, sharing a loft ^vith the Edison
Phonograph Company. The personnel of our com-
pany there consisted of Mr. Vail, Mr. Devonshire
and myself. Mr. "Watson, Mr. Thomas Sanders, the
Treasurer of the Company, also Mr. Hubbard,
would occasionally come down from Boston to con-
fer with Mr. Vail.
Mr. Francis Blake, Jr., who had invented an
ingenius modification of the loose contact trans-
mitter, was at work in Boston trying to put his
transmitter into practical commercial form, but he
was hampered in his work by an increasing nerv-
ousness and he soon afterward retired to his country
place, near Xewton, where he had fitted up a com-
plete shop and laboratory for the pursuit of scien-
tific research.
314
APPEXDICES 315
On January 31, 1879, the BeU Company gave up
the office on Eeade Street and we all proceeded to
Boston. I was requested to take up the perfecting
of the Blake transmitter, and the facilities in the
shops of Mr. Charles Williams, Jr., who at that time
manufactured our instruments, were placed at my
disposal. Mr. W. L. Eichards was assigned to me
as assistant and a very small room had been boarded
off on the office floor to serve as a testing station.
The status of the Blake transmitter, when I took
hold of it, was briefly, that they could not make
twelve transmitters alike good and when these were
adjusted at night they were out of adjustment the
next morning. Besides this circumstance the qual-
ity of transmission was likely to be ''boomy" and
the transmitter had to be spoken into with care in
order that speech be universally well understood
at the receiving end. In fact, it took a trained man,
one who could judge the transmission by his own
receiver, to make commercial talking possible. Such
a transmitter could not be sent out for use by tele-
phone subscribers and for a time during 1879 large
magneto box telephones, screwed against the wall,
continued to be used as transmitters in our tele-
phone service.
The first thing which I discovered was that the
platinum bead which formed one contact electrode
in the Blake transmitter would, when vibrated by
the voice, quickly dig a small cavity into the carbon
button which formed the other contact electrode, I
316 EMILE BERLINER
proceeded to study the electric-arc light carbon rods
from which the buttons were cut. They came from
Wallace and Sons, of Ansonia, Connecticut, and
were of a beautiful even grain, but soft in quality.
We asked one of the Wallace firm to come and see
us, and I questioned him if they could not furnish
us with carbon rods of a hard quality. He said that
it would mean longer baking and this would cause
cracks and fissures to develop all through the rods.
Success in that direction, therefore, appeared to be
doomed to failure.
It then occurred to me that inasmuch as a very
hard and dense gas carbon formed in city gas retorts
on the inner walls, by slow deposition, why couldn 't
we have such deposits formed on our soft carbon
buttons after they had been cut and finished. It did
not take long to design and have made a small cage
of steel rods which were far enough apart to permit
a free access to any gas but close enough to prevent
the carbon buttons from dropping out of the cage.
Several dozen of carbon buttons were placed in the
cage and, with an introduction to the superintendent
of the Boston Gas Works, I proceeded to their plant.
I was told that city gas was made in ** charges" of
four hours each, after which the residual coke was
removed and a fresh charge of coal put into the
retort. I was also told that the gas was the densest
on the top of the coal charge. I requested that my
little cage should be placed on the top of the coal
during three consecutive charges and that I would
APPENDICES 317
send for it the following day. When I received the
cage and opened it I found my carbon buttons all
shriveled up by heat, and instead of a nice, smooth
and hard carbon coating, they had a porous and
rough appearance; it looked like failure. But I
rubbed one of the shriveled buttons on a piece of
emery cloth and, after rubbing off the spongy outer
coating, I suddenly found the carbon so hard that
the emery would not touch it. I quickly concluded
that what had happened was that the gas in the
retort had penetrated the carbon buttons while they
were red-hot and thereby had hardened them, and
that herein I w^ould find the solution of the trouble
with the carbon electrodes. A larger and stronger
cage was made, several hundred fresh carbon but-
tons were placed in it and the cage was sent to the
gas works with the request that it be placed in the
retort for one charge only and be put lower down
into the mass of fresh coal. My surmise was found
to be correct. The surfaces of these carbon buttons
were barely injured and when received were in fine
hard shape, ready to be polished after they had been
put into their brass casings.
That process remained the standard method of
treating the carbon buttons as long as Blake trans-
mitters were manufactured.
My next problem was to purify the sound of the
transmission and to prevent the ''boomy" quality.
The transmitter diaphragm was at that time held
in position by two curved steel springs opposite each
318 EMILE BERLINER
other and pressing the loose rubber rimmed dia-
phragm against the iron casting which formed the
frame that held the transmitter parts. I f omid that
by removing one of the springs and substituting
for it a small clip which pressed against the soft
rubber rim at the edge of the diaphragm the sound
was improved. Furthermore, by reducing the curv-
ature of the other spring the transmission became
entirely pure. As a final step I straightened the two
small springs which held the carbon and the plati-
num electrodes so that these springs were parallel
wdth the diaphragm.
After reporting that the Blake transmitter had
been perfected, orders were given that two hundred
transmitters a day should be made for us. These
were tested by myself and Mr. Richards and, once
adjusted, they remained in first-class working order.
I personally tested the first twenty thousand trans-
mitters and then turned this branch of the instru-
ments over to Mr. Richards. I devoted myself there-
after to research work and helped Professor
Charles R. Cross, of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, in the exhaustive experiments which
he made for Mr. Storrow to support the latter 's
legal work in the defense of our patents and in our
attacks against infringers.
The perfected Blake transmitter proved to be
vastly superior to the Edison compressed lampblack
button transmitter, which the Gold and Stock Tele-
graph Company put out for use by its subscribers.
APPENDICES 319
And this, I believe, was an important factor and
helped the Bell Company to defeat the Western
Union Telegraph Company, bringing the latter to
terms which ended the costly telephone fight be-
tween the two corporations. It insured to the Bell
Company the telephone monopoly.
Ill
A TEIBUTE TO EMILE BERLINER
N THE occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday
(May 20, 1925) we, the colleagues of Emile
Berliner on the Board of Directors of the Associa-
tion for the Prevention of Tuberculosis of the Dis-
trict of Columbia, in monthly session assembled,
wish to offer our felicitations to Mr. Berliner upon
his attainment of threescore and fifteen years.
We rejoice in his full possession of the rare gift
of mental and physical vigor which he has sought to
bring to others, especially the younger generation.
As a constant observer of the Association's
twelve Health Rules, which he was so largely instru-
mental in having drafted, Mr. Berliner is particu-
larly an exemplar to all of us in the practise of the
precept twelve, '' Cultivate cheerfulness and kindli-
ness, it will help you to resist disease." Surely, if
that is the secret of Mr. Berliner's "Mens Sana in
Corpore Sano," we shall msh to thank him for
shomng us the way of eternal youth.
No one but the Recording Angel ^^^ll ever know
the number of infant and child lives saved in this
community by Mr. Berliner's tireless efforts to ob-
tain for Washington a safe commercial milk supply.
320
APPENDICES 321
Ever since 1901 and before the movement against
tuberculosis was organized, as we know it to-day,
Mr. Berliner in season and out of season has
preached the danger of raw milk, especially in the
feeding of infants and invalids. After a quarter
of a century of such efforts, Mr. Berliner had the
satisfaction of seeing Congress clothe the health
officer with power to regulate milk standards in the
District of Columbia, a policy which he so long and
untiringly advocated.
Mr. Berliner's interest in health education and
his belief in the value of publicity and reiteration
of health precepts in the public press and through
the printed page are too well-known to his colleagues
of this Association to call for extended remarks. In
the minutes of the monthly meetings of the Board of
Directors the reports of the Chairman of the Com-
mittee on Publications bear permanent testimony to
Mr. Berliner's efforts to spread the gospel of posi-
tive health.
"We, the directors of this Association, congratu-
late ourselves upon having had as our president
from 1917 to 1922, and as a charter member of the
Association, Emile Berliner, whose inventions have
brought happiness and satisfaction to countless
thousands, as well as honor, fame and world-wide
recognition to himself from fellow-scientists ; a man
whose devotion to public health and public welfare
has not been second in interest to his scientific
attainments.
322 EMILE BERLINER
RESOLVED : That a copy of this tribute be
placed upon the permanent records of the Associa-
tion for the Prevention of Tuberculosis of the Dis-
trict of Columbia and an engrossed copy be pre-
sented to Mr. Berliner with the assurance of the
esteem and affection of his colleagues of the Board
of Directors of the Association.
George M. Kober, M. D.
President
Attest
Walter S. Ufford
Seal Secretary
May 10, 1926
IV
A SPECIMEN OF BERLINER'S ^'HEALTH
EDUCATION" BULLETINS
How a Love Kiss May Be a Death Kiss
(from the WASHINGTON STAR)
MONG my acquaintances is a young couple,
who, at the time of the occurrence which I
will relate, had a beautiful five-months-old boy baby,
well developed physically, and particularly bright
and winsome. One day the child appeared to have
caught a catarrhal cold. The next day it developed
a fever temperature, pneumonia set in, and on the
following morning the child died.
With the sadness of the event on my mind, I at-
tempted to find out, if possible, where the child
caught the infection that killed it. From the father
I learned that the apartment in which they lived was
cleaned with vacuum cleaners, that their rooms were
swept with cai^pet sweepers, that they were careful
at all times to have good ventilation, and that watch-
ful intelligence prevailed in their home in order to
have it sanitary and well lighted.
During the funeral, which I attended, I heard
the mother of the child repeatedly cough in a way
323
324 EMILE BERLINER
which indicated that she had a bad bronchial affec-
tion, and when the carriages had returned it oc-
curred to me to ask the father if, to his knowledge,
the child had ever been kissed on the mouth by any-
body. He said no, that they never had allowed any-
body to kiss the baby, and only Katherine, the
mother, occasionally had kissed it, and then, of
course, on the mouth.
Needless to say, I forbade the father ever to
tell his wife that I had questioned him, but I warned
him that if there should be another child that he
should see to it that no one, not even the mother,
should ever kiss it on the mouth. I explained to him
how such a kiss on the lips of a child, with its deli-
cate mucous membranes and its low resistance to
disease, might easily set up and develop an infection
of dangerous proportion, even though the patho-
genic or disease germs that could produce infection
in a child might in the mouth of a healthy adult
remain harmless.
It was the late General George M. Sternberg, for
a number of years surgeon-general of the United
States Army and a scientist of great distinction and
repute, who first discovered germs of pneumonia in
the sputum of a great many adults who were other-
wise in perfect health. He found the germ (known
as the pneumo-coccus) even in his o^^^l mouth, and
also other germs, resting latent and mthout danger,
but ready to set up serious infections should the
carrier of the germs have had his natural resis-
APPENDICES 325
tance to disease lowered. Such a state might be
brought about by various hygienic omissions, by the
continuous breathing of bad air, by the continuous
partaking of impure food, notably raw milk and
cream; by excesses of all kinds, by morbid thoughts
and by lack of cheer and kindliness.
When body resistance is thus lowered, path-
ogenic or disease-producing germs may rapidly
multiply in the highly favorable en^'ironments of
the warm inner mouth, or oral cavity, and invade the
human organism, causing disease. That is the ac-
cepted theory of general infection. Even of greater
import than the disease germ itself is the ready soil
on which it may grow and multiply. This is what
we must guard against, and progressive and specific
hygiene teaches us how to do so.
The warning which the above occurrence carries
need not unduly alarm healthy adults, nor young
lovers mth their splendid vitality, nor members of
families in good condition of health. It need not
necessarily impugn the safety of all demonstrations
of deep affection betw^een humankind.
But it does most strongly apply to children, who,
on account of their frailness of bodies and the deli-
cate kind of tissue forming their mucous mem-
branes, are very sensitive to infection. It also
applies to those adults who are for a time in an un-
dermined condition of health, in a state of lessened
resistance to disease, which happens now and then
in every one's life.
Former Surgeon-General Doctor Eupert Blue
326 EMILE BERLINER
told me at the time of the last influenza epidemic
that he gargled twice a day with a good antiseptic
solution in order to destroy such pathogenic germs
as might have got and lodged in his mouth or throat.
He said that if this was done by everybody at reg-
ular intervals a large amount of preventable disease
would be nipped in the bud before endangering
health.
There are many antiseptic solutions to be had,
some of which are more or less eflflcacious in destroy-
ing disease germs. And recently a pathological
laboratory in Washington tested a solution made,
according to my doctor's prescription, as follows:
Menthol 4 grains
Alcohol 1 ounce
Sod. Bicarb 30 grains
Sod. Borate 30 grains
Dist. water 8 ounces
Filter if necessary.
It was found to be a true and rather high-grade
germicide. This solution, which can be had from
any druggist, is cheap, and I personally have found
it most efficacious as a gargle or a spray for many
j'ears. Even when diluted v*dth water in fifty-fifty
proportion, it mil, when promptly applied several
times at short intervals, break up a fresh sore
throat or it will correct an infected or badly tasting
mouth, provided the cause is not in the teeth or in
the stomach.
APPENDICES 327
In times of sore-throat epidemics, or of diseases
that develop in the mouth, or oral cavity, like diph-
theria or pneumonia, or when such a disease has
entered the household, it would be well advised to
use an antiseptic mouth wash as a spray or a deep
gargle twice or three times a day.
Children are so sensitive to infection that rooms
in which a death occurred from any infectious dis-
ease should always be promptly disinfected, pre-
ferably by a trained employee of the health office.
V
THE SCIENTIFIC SIDE OF MUSIC
By Emile Berliner, Tresident of the Berliner Gramophone
Company, Limited, Montreal
(WKITTEN FOR THE WASHINGTON TIMEs)
THE scientific side of music which you desire
me to deal with, is a large enough subject to
fill a good-sized book, rather than a single news-
paper column. Music is rhythmic sound, air pulses
occurring at regular intervals and at a rate of not
less than sixteen vibrations per second and not more
than about sixteen thousand vibrations per second,
which, in a fair way, represents the limits within
which an average musical ear can differentiate be-
tween two tones having different rates of vibrations
or different pitch.
When several musical tones of different pitch
sound together, their vibrations or waves overlap,
and form compound waves, so that at one instant
a fraction of one set of waves predominates, in the
next instant a fraction of another set. As these
different fractions follow one another at a very
rapid rate, between sixteen and, say, sixteen thou-
328
APPENDICES 329
sand per second, we receive the sensation of a chord,
or of a single mass of sound, either of harmony or
disharmony.
This is similar to the manner in which the eye
receives a motion picture, by the rapid projection of
several progressive photographs of a moving object.
Even if we listen to a whole orchestra, with or with-
out the addition of singing, the ear at one instant
only takes notice of that fraction of the performance
which happens at that moment to predominate.
To prove that this is the case we can let sound
wiite itself down by means of the phonautograph,
invented by the Frenchman, Leon Scott, about 1856.
One of these instruments is in the United States
National Museum. It consists of a large cylinder,
covered with paper, the surface of which is covered
with soot from a smoky flame. A sound box, having
a diaphragm and a receiving horn, is provided mth
a slender bristle stylus, fastened to the center of the
diaphragm, and which is so adjusted that the stylus
just touches the surface of the cylinder sidewise.
When the cylinder is rotated and passes the stylus
in screw fashion the latter traces a spiral line
around the cylinder.
If now sound is emitted into the horn the spiral
line becomes waves and each wave represents a frac-
tion of the sound that caused the diaphragm to vi-
brate.
It will then be found that the higher pitched the
sound is, the more rapidly do these waves follow one
330 EMILE BERLINER
another, and as the pitch is lower the fewer are the
waves in a given time. In the case of an orchestra
playing, the wave line becomes most complicated,
yet there is discernible a certain regularity, as sets
of waves repeat themselves when a more or less sus-
tained chord is recorded.
Jazz effects will record themselves in waves
of striking or irregular forms and so will all mere
noises which in themselves are not considered
musical.
If we try to analyze the wave lines of articulate
speech by means of a phonautograph we shall dis-
cern sets of complicated waves which represent the
vowel sounds, but most consonants, like r, s, sh, c,
and s, which are very minute waves, repeating them-
selves rapidly.
The tune or melody is due to the inspiration of
the composer, but the harmony to accompany the
tune follows strict laws, which, while capable of a
great variety of modulations, must be kept within
certain limits, prescribed by the science of harmony.
The highest musical art is expressed by proper
orchestration, and the finest compositions are those
in which the inspiration of a lovely or artistic
melody proceeds and stands out against the back-
ground of perfect harmonj^, expressed by skilful
orchestration. Such is the case for instance in
so-called grand opera. Besides, we have the works
of orchestral music itself, with an infinite variety
of leading melodies, as well as the masterpieces
APPENDICES 331
of dramatic effects giving the musical background
by means of which stage action is illuminated
or by which emotions are expressed. Then there
are the immortal creations of piano and organ
music, instrumental and vocal duets, trios, quar-
tettes and sextettes, and the superb compositions for
the violin and other solo instruments. Songs of all
kinds from the simple folk melodies to the great
church masses and oratories form a rich heritage
bestowed on us by past geniuses, and which are
added to without end by living creations of con-
temporaneous songs and harmonies.
All these treasures of musical science have dur-
ing the past twenty years been made more access-
ible to the great public by the talking machine. In
this instrument the record is not merely a wave line
dra^^^l on paper, but is a groove of sound waves in-
dented, engraved or etched into solid material. The
sound waves are either represented by the varying
depths of a straight groove, as in the phonograph
and graphophone, or by a groove looking like the
old phonautographic record, of even depth, and
showing the sound waves as an undulating groove
waiting. The latter system is that of the Gramo-
phone or Victrola and is the more perfect of the
two, so that the great singers and performers prefer
that their art be recorded by that system.
Sound is reproduced in talking machines be-
cause the sound grooves move the stylus connected
with the center of the diaphragm and the latter is
332 EMILE BERLINER
vibrated by the sound waves that are embodied in
the grooves caused by the original sound waves.
Like engravings for printing, sound records can
be duplicated without limit by pressing electrotyped
reverse engravings, called matrices, into a proper
material under heat and pressure. The material
usually employed is a special kind of hard black
sealing wax, so that a disk sound record might often
be properly called the seal of the human voice.
VI
WONDERS
An Essay
(written about 1890 by emile beeuner)
PEOPLE are apt to look for wonders in the
sphere of the supernatural, in the narrative
of the Holy Scriptures, in the fables of antiquity,
and in the seances of so-called spiritualism, but by
far the greatest wonders are every-day occurrences
and lie around in innumerable forms in our im-
mediate neighborhood. Let me cite a few.
Here is a piece of glass. It is of so dense a mate-
rial that the most rarified gases, which would easily
pass through a block of brass or steel, can be held
forever within a bulb of glass, the walls of which
are less than a hundredth of an inch thick. Yet all
the vibrations of light emanating from the various
objects of a landscape will pass unobstructed
through a pane several inches thick, permitting the
picture to be accurately represented on the retina of
our eye, and even a block of several feet thickness
would still permit a fair view through it of the forms
and colors behind.
333
XU KM ILK I'.KIMJNKI?,
TuVci a rna/i^net and a inouiiicid iioo(ll(» of iron, put
l)(!ivv(!(;ii bolli a ^ViimU) l)loc;k W(!igliin,i^ H(!Voral toiiH,
and jlio iKH'dlc! will Kl.ili olx'-y IIk; nioliori of ilio mag-
JKil, jnsl as ir IIk; granllu 1)I()('I< did iiol, cxiHi.
Vou Tnay pass an ch'clrict cnnciii stron,;:,' (M)ou^Ii
to kill by Hhock a dozen ox(vn at once, or to nut in mo-
tion Tna(diin(!ry ro[)r(!H(!niing- a tlion.sand,liorHO[)ow(ir,
tliron/^1) a small bar of copixu'; ])nt this vory bar of
('()pj)cr will nol, allcr if,s vv('i.i;lii vvliib* llu^ cnrrciii is
I)asHin^, nor- show any onlwjifd indicalion \vliai(!V(!r
of tlie trmriundouH forco [)nlsal,injL^ tlii-oiigb ii.
A piox'Ci of musk may ((xliab; its i;cn<!tratinjL^ odor
in a larji;'(! liall with ofx'n windows for ton yoarfl,
l)nl, ii would rccpiirc a, vciy ddicfito babiiicf to j)i-ov(^
that it iiiis lost in wci.i^ht from (In^ ('Xp('nditni'(i of so
much odoiifcrons cncr.^y.
A violin is pcrfcclly tuned ])y Hk; liJii'Uiony re-
Kullinij;' from owe loius and tiu! fil'lli following on tlio
rnj;'ular scnlc, bid, if a, |»i;ino would be tuned on IIk;
Siirui^ piineiple, i. c, lli;it every (il'lli lone would
m;il((; a perfect liarinony with IIk; first, IIh; piano,
(!V(!n if pl.'iyed l)y a iJ.nbinstiiin or a Liszt, would
give out such fe;irful <liseords UH to drivo aw/iy tlio
cats boyond he.-irin.ii; distiineo.
A s(|n;ii-e mid a. eireh; ar(! each a most perf<M't
geometrical foi'm (iiidowed with wonderful possibil-
iticH in tlie hands of a skilb'd ma<hem;dici;in, yo\ it
IH imi)ossi])l(! mathematically to calculate! fi'om a cii'-
ele ;i s(|nai(' wliich would rei)reH(Mit the huuw. snri'iice
of area as the ciicle, or vic(r versn. The assutne<l
diameter of a circle always lacks a fraction.
AnMONni(i*:s 'm\:^
At a distance of sovornl miles lot iis place a iiuni-
bor of candles, (lie (allow of wliicli lias been uiixed
oacli with a dKTeront subslanco, for instance, salt,
iron dust, potasaiutn, uKim-, ric. There will be ap-
parcndy no did'erenco in the kind or anionnt of light
sliown by each candle, nor wonld a powerl'nl (elo-
st'ope reveal such, bu(. upon loekini;- at (he ilauies
widi a small triangular block of glass called a prism,
and which is sui(id)Iy nionnled, \v(> can a( once de-
tormino what snbstance has been mixed with each
slii'k o\' (idlow. Based nj)on (his wonder we are able
(() deierniintf the composition of bnrning stars many
bilhons of mih's away.
If a wiri> be stretched five tinu\s aronnd (he ejirdi,
an electric current would traverse it in one stu-ond,
and a. person kilh'd by lightning hasn'( (inu» enough
left to see the (lash.
A pu(T of air not strong enough (o exdngtiish a
c;nidl(> Maine, when slowly blown across the nionlli
of a glass bodle will pi'odncc a. (one lond enongli lo
be heard several hundred feel ; and a( (^-ibin .John's
l^ridge, near Washinglon, a, sof( whisper will (ravt^l
from end (o end under (he arch which s(re(ches
about (wo hundred and lifiy feel, nnd is sex'enty-fivo
f(M'(, high. !( seems Incredible llial a whisper wouhl
have (hat nuich pene(ra(ing power.
The laws of graviialion an^ so ])(>rfe('(, (lia( lh(\v
cnabl(Ml Leverrier to i)redict (Ik^ discovery, ;md
poini out (he exnci i)osilion in Ihe heavens, of (ho
l)lai'et Neptune, which was found (her(> a few days
336 EMILE BERLINER
later, and which is two billion, six hundred million
miles away from the sun.
The power of the brain to recall by memory the
impressions received by us years ago is beyond
doubt one of the greatest wonders, and is likely
forever to remain an unfathomable myster^^
The heart beats forty million times in a year,
and the lungs inhale seven hundred thousand gallons
of air in the same period, and all this and a great
many other functions of the human body, one more
elaborate that the other, continue without undue
friction and disturbance — unless it be 'hy our own
trespasses — for seventy years, and all that is re-
quired for us to do is to eat and drink the good
things of earth; for the rest of the organs of the
body take care of themselves.
Thus, and through countless other wonders, by
teaching humility to its disciples, Science assumes
the role of a most potent religion.
INDEX
INDEX
Acoustics
"acoustic tiles" of Berliner,
274
Berliner 's present work in con-
nection -with, 273
Addresses of Berliner
American Institute of Archi-
tects, 277
Electro-Technical Society of
Berlin, 204-209
Franklin Institute, 45, 171,
193, 195, 199
Technical Society of Frank-
fort-on-the-Main, 215
Technical Society of Hanover,
203
Adler Cora
marriage to Berliner, 109-110,
166
Air brake invented, 42
Alcantara, Emperor Dom Pedro
de and Empress Theresa, 63
America
at beginning of second century
of independence, 42
immigration from Germany, 13
American Association of Univer-
sity Women
Sarah Berliner Research Fel-
lowship, 302, 304
American Bell Telephone Com-
pany
see, Telephone systems
American Graphophone Company,
181
American Institute of Architects
Berliner's address, 277
American Pediatric Society, 238,
244
American Speaking Telephone
Company
subsidiary of Western Union,
124
American Telephone and Tele-
graph Company
see, Telephone systems
Architecture
acoustic qualities, 273
Arthur, Chester
Washington at time of his
administration, 183
Associated Charities
Committee on Tuberculosis, 242
Association for the Prevention
of Tuberculosis, 242, 246,
320
Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph
Company, 104
Atlantic cable laid, 54
Barker, George F. (Professor),
149
Barraud, Francis
and "Xipper, " 225
Bayreuth, theater in
acoustic qualities, 284
339
340
EMILE BEELINER
Behrend, B. J., 40
Belknap, William W.,
resignation as secretary of
war, 24
Bell, Alexander Graham
experiments "with human ear,
• 57
marriage, 56
patents of, pending, 109
telephone invented, 44, 46, 51,
55, 57
Volta Prize award, 180
Bell, Chichester A.,
Bell-Tainter graphophone, 181
Bell family, 56
Bell-Tainter graphophone, 181
Bell Telephone Company of
Boston, 105
see also, Telephone systems
interest in Berliner 's invention,
110
Bell Telephone Securities Com-
pany, 49
Bell Telephone system
see, Telephone systems
Berlin University, 1
Berliner, Alice, 235-236
Berliner, Emile
see also, Address of Berliner
acoustic studies, 273
affiliation with Bell system,
113, 117
Americanization begun, 28
birthplace at Hanover, 2
characteristics at seventy-five,
272, 288, 295
child health studies, 235-236
children of, 296
citizenship, 184
first papers taken out, 41, 67
clerkship in Hanover, 8
Berliner, Emile, con't.
date of birth, 1
departure for America, 17
Elliott Cresson award, 194
essays, 328, 333
financial status in 1877, 89
first job, as printer's devil, 10
gramophone
Edison-Berliner ' ' Competi-
tion," 206-211
introduced into Germany,
202
inventions, 168
patent
application filed, 185
health rules, 295
introduction to G. G. Gardiner,
106
inventive tendencies, 11, 67
marriage, 109-110, 166
member of New York Oratorio
Society, 218
microphone
caveat, 166-167
Bell system control of, 117
filed, 88, 97, 125
text of, 309
invention of, recognized by
Supreme Court, 154
patent application, 97
patent received, 140
microphonic principle discover-
ed, 75, 80
music
composer of, 218
early love of, 7
New York
decision to live in, 31, 37
physical breakdo^vn
in 1878, 119
in 1879, 157
INDEX
341
Berliner, Emile, con't.
pro-Ally sympathies, 292
public health work, 234
salesmanship, 36
Sarah Berliner Research Fel-
lowship, 302
schooling, 8, 9, 288
telephone, work on, 52, 72
tuberculosis
infirmary endowed by, 249
tribute paid by Association
for, 320
violins, study of structure, 219
visions of the future, 301
visit to Germany in 1881, 162
von Helmholtz's visit, 212-215
Washington, as place of resi-
dence, 183
Berliner family, 3
Berliner Fellowship, 302, 304
Berliner Gramophone Company,
200
changed from
United States Gramophone
Company, 221
changed to
Victor Talking Machine
Company, Camden, 220-221
Victor Talking Machino
Company of Canada, 223
Berliner, Jacob
telephone company formed, 164
Berliner, Joseph, 161
Binns, Jack, 261
Bismarck, Prince Otto von
unity of Germany under, 7
Blake, Francis
transmitter or loose contact
microphone, 127
paper in archives of Ameri-
can Telephone and Tele-
graph Company, 314
Blue, Rupert (Doctor), 325
Boeock, John O.,
author of Romance of the Tele-
phone, 147
Bourseuil, Charles
discoveries in speech trans-
mission, 175
early idea of telephone, 52
Brazilian Emperor and Empress
at Centennial Exposition,
63
Brewer, Justice, 151, 152, 153
British Gramophone Company,
223
Broadcasting
see, Radio
Brown, Frank Howarth, 72
Bryan, William Jennings
slogan of 1896, 33
Buckingham, Doctor D, E.,
242
Bunsen burner invented, 192
Burbank, Luther, 294
Bureau of Health Education,
249
Cabin John 's Bridge, 335
Cabot, Richard C. (Doctor), 305
Carnegie Peace Endowment
Slosson's address quoted, 206
Carty, J. J. (General), 264
Casson, Herbert N., 57
author of. History of the Tele-
phone, 125
Centennial Exposition at Phila-
delphia, 42
Emperor and Empress of
Brazil present, 63
telephone exhibited at, 61
Cheever, Charles A., 104
342
EMILE BEELINER
Child health
Berliner 's participation in
work, 23-i
publications, 248, 250, 290,
323
China
legend of voice preservation,
232
telephone use in, 47
Civil War
Eeconstruction period follow-
ing, 23
Clark, Alfred, 187
director of British gramophone
companr, 224
Columhian Anthem
composed by Berliner, 218
Cooke, Jav
banking house of, failed, 32
CooHdge, Calvin
nasal twang of, broadcasts
well, 267
Coolidge, Calvin (Mrs.)
interest in milk purification,
249
Coombs, Charles L.
Berliner 's patent application
written by, 98
called in Bell-Berliner defense,
150
Cotton gin invented, 42
"Crime of 'Seventy- Three, " 32
Cros, Charles
speech reproduction, studies of,
179
Cross, Charles R. (Professor)
defender of Bell-Berliner
patents, 150
experimental work, 130, 166,
318
Damroseh, Leopold, 220
founder of New York Oratorio
Society, 218
Davis, John W.,
Democratic presidential candi-
date, 267
Defense Day, 1924
broadcasting teat, 264
De Forest, Lee (Doctor)
Inventor of vacuum tube, 258
Democratic National Convention
broadcasting of, in 1924, 266
Devonshire, E. W., 127
Dexter, William H. (Doctor),
242
Dickerson and Beaman
attorneys for Telephone Com-
pany of New York, 103
Dictaphone, 182
see also, Gramophone; Grapho-
phone; Phonograph
DidasTcalia, The
"Electrical Telephony," term
first used by, 53
Dolbear, Amos E. (Professor)
association with Western
Uuiou, 124, 135
inventions claimed, 137-138
patents of, pending, 109
Drawbaugh, Daniel
telephone invention claimed,
138
Edison, Thomas A.,
association with Western
Union, 124, 135
device for transmitting voice
messages, 177
phonograph
Edison-Berliner "competi-
tion," 206-211
INDEX
343
Edison, Thomas A.
phonograph, con't.
first, description of, 179
transmitter
patent application filed, 96,
125
patent pending, 109
used by Western Union, 115
Edmunds, Henry, 232
Education
Guggenheim Fellowships, 303
Sarah Berliner Kesearch Fel-
lowship, 302, 30i
Electric lighting
first in Washington, 70
Electricity
early wave theories, 255
first cell made by Volta, 180
loose contacts, action explained,
86
transformers, first use with
microphone, 94
Electro-Technical Society of
Germany
exhibition of phonograph and
gramophone, 204
Elliott Cresson medal
awarded to Berliner, 194
Employee ownership
Bell systems, 49
Engel, August, 39
Engel, Carl, 231
England, see Great Britain
Ericsson, John
Monitor invented, 42
Europe
gramophone industry in, 215
telephone
introduction, 161
present use of, 46
Fahlberg, Constantine (Doctor)
Berliner's work with, 37
saccharin discovered by, 38
Faraday, Michael, 79
Financial panic of 1873, 32
Fischer, Emil
medal award to, 195
Fisk, "Jim," 34
Fowler, W. C. (Doctor), 249
France
first telephones, 165
government o^vnership of tele-
phone symstems, 48
Volta Prize award to A. G.
Bell, 180
Franklin, Benjamin
lightning rod invented, 42
Franklin, Christine Ladd (Mrs.),
302
Franklin Institute
Berliner's address, 45, 171,
193, 195, 199
medal awards to
Berliner, 194
Fischer, 195
Eayleigh, 195
Steinmetz, 195
Fulton, Eobert
first steamboat, 42
Galvani, Luigi, 40
Gamble, Clarence (Doctor), 305
Garland, Augustus H.,
counsel of Pan-Electric Com-
pany, 143
Gas appliances
Bunsen burner invented, 192
George V
exiled from Hanover, 8
King of Hanover, 2
344
EMILE BEELINER
Georgetown University, 235
Germans
immigration to America, 13
Germany
Electro-Technical Society
exhibition of plionograph
and gramophone, 204
government ownership of tele-
phone systems, 48
gramophones
industry in, 215
introduction, 202
language defined by Mark
Twain, 35
Prussian rule, 14
pure speech of Hanover, 2
telephones
first, 162, 164
invention claimed by, 54
theaters of, 6
toy manufacturing in, 216
unity, under Bismarck, 7
Gifford, George
Western Union attorney, 135
Gold and Stock Telegraph Com-
pany
subsidiary of Western Union,
130, 135
Golz, Lieutenant-General, 205
Goodyear, Charles
vulcanized rubber made, 42
Gotthelf, Natlian, 15
Gould, Jay, 34
Gramophone
see also, Dictaphone; Grapho-
phone ; Phonautograph ;
Phonograph; Talking ma-
chines
Berliner's inventions, 168
companies handling, 220-221,
223-224
Gramophone, con't.
competition, 221
demonstration at Franklin In-
stitute, 171, 193, 195, 199
development, 186, 196
Edison-Berliner * ' competition ' *
in Berlin, 206-211
first discoveries, 175
"His Master's Voice" and
"Nipper," 225
in Germany, 202, 215-216
patent, application filed, 185
records
lateral cut disk, 227
production of duplicates, 199
use of rubber composition,
160, 200
use in trenches in World War,
225
Gramophone Company, Limited,
187, 188, 223
munition manufacture during
World War, 224
Grant, E. E. (Mrs.), 249, 291
Grant, Ulysses S.,
presidency, 23, 27
Graphophone
see also. Dictaphone; Gramo-
phone; Phonograph
outgrowth of phonograph, 181
patented, 181
Gray, Elisha (Professor)
association with Western Union
124, 135
inventions claimed, 135, 136,
137
patents of, pending, 109
Great Britain
Barraud, Francis, 225
government ownership of tele-
phone systems, 48
INDEX
345
Gramophone Company, Limited
223
"His Master's Voice," 225
World War activities, 224
Guggenheim Fellowships, 303
Haber, Fritz
nitrogen process diseoveries,
206
Hammonia, 19, 20
Hanover
annexed to Prussia, 7-8
birthplace of
Berliner, 2
Herschel, 3
von Hindenburg, 3
George V, King of, 2
horses, famous breed of, 5
Institute of Technology, 2
"King's birthday," 5
memories of Napoleonic Wars,
4, 6
national strife over, 2
OpernluLus, 6
pure type of German spoken, 2
Schiitzenfest celebration, 4
Harlan, Justice, 154
Harris, Isham G.,
director of Pan-Electrie Com-
pany, 143
Hatch, Wallace, 242
Hay, John
description of Washington, 26
Hays, Rutherford B.,
presidential inauguration, 81
Health service, public
Berliner's interest in, 234
Hecht, Herman, 163, 165
Henry, Joseph (Professor)
interest in Berliner 's work,
100, 120
Henry, Joseph (Professor), con't.
recognition of Bell's telephone,
65
sound vibrations studied, 176
Herschel, William (Sir)
birthplace at Hanover, 3
Hertz, Heinrich
electrical experiments, 255
Hertzian waves (electricity), 255
Hindenburg
see^ von Hindenburg
"His Master's Voice," 225
Hoover, Herbert
quoted on, radio, 269
Horses of Hanover, 5
Houston, David F., 49
Howe, Elias
sewing machine invented, 42
Hubbard, Gardiner G., 61, 102
letter to Berliner regarding his
illness, 120, 122
negotiations with Berliner, 104
Hubbard, Mabel
marriage to Bell, 56
Hudson, John E.,
president, American Bell Tele-
phone Company, 150
Hughes, David Edward
loose contacts studied by, 117
Infant mortality
Berliner's interest in, 234
International Eucharistic Con-
gress, 275
Inventions
American
first and second centuries of,
42, 43
Berliner's work on the micro-
phonic principle, 75
gramophone of Berliner, 168
346
EMILE BERLINER
Inventions, con 't.
micfoplione of Berliner
caveat, 88, 97
patent applicatioil, 97
phonograph of Edison, 179
telegraph of Morse, 42
telephone of Bell, 44, 4(5, 51,
55, 57
transformer, continuous cur-
rent, 101
transmitter of Berliner, 82
Inventors
productive ages of, 69
qualities essential, 287
Johnson, Edward H.,
associated with Edison, 177
Johnson, Eldridge K,
gramophone, supplementary
■U'ork on, 227-228
president, Victor Talking Ma-
chine Company, 222
Johnston, Joseph E. (General)
president of Pan-Electric Com-
pany, 143
Journal of the Telegraph, 71
Kaempffert, Waldemar, 76
quoted on, Berliner's gramo-
phone, 201
quoted on, radio, 256
Kelvin, Lord
see, Thomson, William (Sir)
Kinnan, William A., 191
Kober, George Martin, (Doctor),
235, 291
tribute to Berliner signed by,
322
Krupp, Alfred
steel exhibit in London, 2
La Porte, Indiana
early telephones in, 131
Language, universal, 300
Levy, Max, 199
Library of Congress
talking machine records kept
by, 231
Lightning rod invented, 42
Lodge, Oliver (Sir), 253
Loeb, Jacques (Professor), 239
Lubin, Isadore, 236
Luther, Martiu
Tefuge in castle at Wartburg,
216
Lyons, Joseph
testimony regarding micro-
phone, 92
Magoffin, Ealph ^ (Professor),
248
Magruder, G. L. (Doctor), 244
Marconi, William
inventor of radio, 256
Marriage
Berliner's views, 299
Massachusetts General Hospital
heart beats recorded, 305
Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology
experimental work at, 130
Maxwell, James Clerk, 298
author of Electricity and Mag-
netism, 254
Maynard, George C, 70
Medals
see also, Prizes
Elliot Cressoii award to Ber-
liner, 194
Fischer, award to, 195
Lord Raylcigh, award to, 195
Steinmetz, award to, 195
Medical science
heart beats recorded, 305
INDEX
347
Mclvin, A. D. (Doctor), 2U
Microphone
as laboratory equipment, 252
Berliner 's invention
caveat, 166-167
Bell system control of, 117
filing of, 88, 97, 125
text of, 309
due credit accorded, 154
patent application, 97
patent received, 140
Blake's design, 127
paper in archives of Ameri-
can Telephone and Tele-
graph Company, 314
loose contacts in connection
•with, 87
radio
"push-pull" type, 253
use in broadcasting, 251
transformer combined ■with, 94
Watson's examination of. 111
Microphonic principle
discovered by Berliner, 75, 80
loose contacts explained, 86
Milk
law passed by Congress, 249
pasteurization of, 237
relation to infant mortality,
237
scalding, defined, 239
Washington Post bulletin,
238
Milk Dealers' and Producers'
Associations, 240
Miller, William H. H., 146
Missouri
secession policy, 13-14
Monitor
of Ericsson, 42
Morse, Samuel F. B. (Professor)
memorial services for, 99-100
telegraph invented, 42
Music, Scientific Side of
by Berliner, 328
Muzzey, David
quoted on Grant 's characteris-
tics, 24
Napoleonic Wars, 4, 6
National Republican
account of Berliner 's inven-
tion, 100
National Tuberculosis Associa-
tion
Silver Trophy Cup awarded
by, 247
New York Oratorio Society
founded by Damrosch, 218
Norris, James L.,
patent attorney engaged by
Berliner, 97
Oppenheimer, Simon and Gustave
called in defense of Bell-Ber-
liner patents, 150
Overland Company, 139
Paine, Albert Bigelow
author of, ''In One Man's
Life," 123
Pan-Electric Company
organization and management,
142-143
Paris Opera House
talking machine records kept
by, 232
Pasteurization of milk
advocated by Berliner, 237-238
Patents
Bell-Berliner
assailed, 143
348
EAIILE BERLIXER
Patents
Bell-Berliner, eon't.
Supreme Court deeision,
151
validated by United States
Supreme Court, 134
Ben-Taiater graph oph one, ISl
gramophone of Berliner
application filed, 185
" interf erenees, " 107
microphone of Berliner
eareat, 88, 97, 125, 166-167
BeH system eontrol of, 117
text of, 309
jasaed, 1891, 140
trangformcr, continuous cur-
rent, 101
transmitter, Edison 's appUca-
tion for, 95
Pershing, John J. (General)
faretveU address to army, 264
Philadelphia
Centennial, 42
Phonautograph
deserfoed, 176
invented by Leon Scott, 175
Phonograph
see also, Dictaphone; Gramo-
phone ; Graphophone ;
Phonaatogia^; Talking
Tnachinfa
Edison-Berliner " eompeti-
tion" in Berlin, 206-211
Edison 'e invention
first maehinp made, 179
Polities
dnring Grant's administration,
24
Pollok, Anthony, 109
Postage
foreign, in 1870, 23
Preece, VTilliain (Sir), 255
Prizes
see also, Medals
Silver Trophy Cup, in connec-
tion -Kith pnbUe health
work, 247
Yolta award to Bell, 180
Providence Hospital
Berliner, a patient at, 119
Public health
Berliner 's participation in
work, 234
publications, 248, 250, 290,
323
statistics, 241-242
work in schools, 246
Public ownership
telephone systems in Great
Britain and Europe, 48
Pupin, Michael
author of. From Immigrant to
Inventor, 211
Putnam, Herbert, 231
Badio
and Bell telephone system, 48
as harbinger of p:ace, 271
broadcasting
Defense Day test in 1924,
264
proper distance from micro-
phone, 254
stations, 260
WJZ at New York, 268
Dawes quoted, 306
future predicted, 305
Hoover quoted on, 269
industry, 260
Marconi, inventor, 256
microphone use, 251
modem practise, 257, 262
national def emse through, 265
IXDEX
349
Badio, con 't.
outstandmg aetievement of,
263
ship's use of, 261
talViTig maeliiiies, us.e a:^e«toi
bT, 221-222
telephonic equipment, 9-i
transatlantic messages, 262-263
Taeutim tube invented, 253
Badio Corporation of America
teusatlantie station, 262
Baitroads
Imiit im the early 'seTenties, 32
Rathenan, Emil, 44
Barleigh, Lord
medal award to, 195
Reis, Philip, 215
telephone of, 53, 138
Be public
collision with Florida, 261
Richards, Alvan S., 74, 150
Biehards, W. L.
assistant to Berliner, 130, 159,
315
Bociefeller Instirute for Medical
Besearch, 239
Bogers, Agnes L. (Professor),
303
Boman CathoUe Churches
acoustic qualities inadequate,
275
Boosevelt, Hilborne L., 104
Eovalties
talking machine
received bv singers, 227
Eubber
imitation
impracticable for telephone
rweirers, 160
use for gramophone disis,
160. 200
ynleanizatioB, 42
Salt Lake City Taber:
acoustic qualities, 2:
San Francisco
47
Sanders, Gerrrcie, 290
Sanders, Thomas, 314
influential in organizing Bell
system, 102
Sarah Berliner Beseareh Fellow-
ship, 302, 304
Saimoff , David
general manager, Badio Cor-
poration of America, 269
Scandinavia
telephone use xo, 46
Schools
pubHe heahh work is, 246
Sehroeder, Ernest Charles ^^Doc-
tor), 242, 244, 291
Schun, Carl, 13, 14
ScMitsenfest celebrated at Han-
over, 4
Seienee
general interest in, 45
Seientinc Side of Mu»ie
by Berliner, 32S
Scott, Leon
discoveries in registering of
Boond, 175, 329
phonautograph, 175
Sholes, Christopher K,
typewriter invented, 42
Siemens and Halske, 163
Siemeas-Halske eketrkal eon-
eera, 203
Siemens-Scliuckert electrical con-
cern, 208
Silver currency
legislation agaisaf^ 3S
350
EMILE BEELINER
Slosson, Edwin E. (Doctor), 206
Smee cells, 70
Smithsonian Institution
exhibit of Berliner's work, 100
Society for Prevention of Sick-
ness, 238, 245
Solomons, A. S., 99, 100, 120
called in defense of Bell-Ber-
liner patents, 150
Sound
acoustic qualities of public
buildings, 273
microphonic action, 87
produced by electric current,
first discovery, 84
reproduction in gramophone,
176
Speeches
see, Addresses of Berliner
Spottiswoode
scientist in Great Britain, 77
Squier, George Owen, 258
Steamboat
Fulton's invention, 42
Steinberg, Alfred J. (Doctor),
247
Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
medal award to, 195
Sternberg, George M., 242, 324
Storrow, James J., Sr., 69, 77
defense of Bell patents, 130,
318
patent lawyer and Bell Tele-
phone Company counsel,
77, 91
quoted on, Berliner's caveat,
91, 167
quoted on, defense of Berlin-
er's patent, 146
Straus, Nathan
pasteurized milk distributed
by, 244
Suess, Werner
assistant to Berliner, 192
Switchboards
first use, 102
Tainter, Charles Sumner
Bell-Tainter graphophone, 181
Talking machines
see also, Dictaphone; Gramo-
phone ; Graphophone ;
Phonautograph ; Phono-
graph
Edison-Berliner "competi-
tion" in Berlin, 206-211
first use of term, 178
gramophone companies, 220-
221, 223-224
heart beats recorded, 305
phonautograph of Scott, 175
radio, effect on, 221-222
records
countries using, 222-223
files of, kept, 231, 232
lateral cut disk, 227
royalties received by opera
singers, 227
Technical Society of Frankfort-
on-the-Main
Berliner's speech, 215
Telegraph
Morse's invention, 42
transmission principle ex-
plained to Berliner, 74
Telephon-Fabrik J. Berliner, 164
Telephone
Bell's invention
development of, 93, 102
Berliner 's work, 52, 72
Birth a7id Babyiwod of, 59
Bourseuil's theory, 52
INDEX
851
Telephone, con 't.
exhibited at Centennial Expo-
sition, 61
first message transmitted, 60-
61
first public use of, by Em-
peror of Brazil, 63
first sound produced, 59
introduction into Europe, 161
invention of
Alexander Graham Bell, 44,
46, 51, 55, 57
microphonic principle, 75
national statistics of use of, 46
recognition of worth, 62
Eeis' work, 53
transformers, continuous cur-
rent, 96
Transmetteur Berliner, 165
transmitter
Berliner's famous soap-box,
82
Watson's work with Bell, 58
Telephone Company of New York
see also, Telephone systems.
Bell
Berliner's correspondence with,
103, 106
Berliner's visit, 104
"Telephone House" in Wash-
ington, 72
Telephone Society of Washing-
ton
Berliner's address, 69
Telephone systems
American Bell Telephone Com-
pany
Hudson, John E. president,
150
American Speaking Telephone
Company, 124
Telephone systems, can't.
American Telephone and Tele-
graph Company, 49, 50
Berliner's report of Blake
transmitter, 129
Defense Day test in 1924,
264
presidents. Vail and Thayer,
154
Bell
see also, Bell Telephone Com-
pany of Boston; Tele-
phone Company of New
York
agreement with Western
Union, 136
Berliner 's affiliation with,
113, 117
Berliner, chief instrument
inspector, 159
"Big Four" of, 126
Boston, the home of, 145
capitalization increased, 304
condition of, at beginning of
Berliner 's service with,
126
employee ownership, 49
extent of, in 1926, 48
growth and expansion, 105
importance to, of Berliner's
discoveries, 122
organization, 102
patent rights assailed, 143
Supreme Court decision,
151
patent rights offered to
Western Union, 123
stock affected by Berliner
patent, 141, 144
strong opposition encoun-
tered, 133
352
EMILE BERLINER
Telephone systems, con't.
Chinese exchange in San Fran-
cisco, 47
first organization, 102
France
first in, 165
Germany
first in, 164
Pan-Electric Company, 142
People 's Telephone Company,
138
public and private ownership,
47-48
transatlantic service planned,
301
Western Union 's competition,
115
Thayer, H, B,
president, American Telephone
and Telegraph Company,
154
Thomson, William (Sir)
recognition of Bell's telephone,
65
Thyssen, August, 272
Tilden, Samuel J.,
presidency defeated, 82
Transformer
continuous current, 96
patent issued, 101
first use of, with microphone,
94
Transmetteur Berliner, 165
Transmitter
Berliner 's invention, 82
Blake's design, 128
paper in archives of Ameri-
can Telephone and Tele-
graph Company, 314
perfected by Berliner, 129
Edison applied for patent, 96,
125
Trend of the times
general interest in science, 45
Trophies
see, Prizes
Tuberculosis
infirmary erected by Berliner,
249
Tuberculosis Association at
Washington, 242, 246
Typewriter invented, 42
United States Gramophone Com-
pany, 221
United States, Supreme Court
decision in Bell-Berliner patent
action, 151
University of Berlin, 1
Urso, Camilla, 220
Vail, Theodore N., 108
biography of, 123
correspondence with Berliner,
114
general manager of Bell sys-
tem, 113, 127
president, American Telephone
and Telegraph Company,
154
visits to Berliner in Providence
Hospital, 120-121, 122
Vessels
radio equipment, 261-262
Victor Talking Machine
trade-mark, 229
Victor Talking Machine Com-
pany
Camden plant described, 229-
230
competition, 221
outgrowth of Berliner Gramo-
phone Company, 220, 221
INDEX
353
Victor Talking Machine Com-
pany, con't.
"Victrola Infringement," 220
Victor Talking Machine Com-
pany of Canada
formerly, Berliner Gramophone
Company, 223
Violins
Berliner's studies of structure,
219
Volta, Alessandro
first electric cell made by, 180
Volta Laboratory in Washington,
180
Volta Prize
awarded to A. G. Bell, 180
von Bojanowski, 204
Ton Biilow, Hans, 204
Ton Bunsen, Eobert Wilhelm, 192
von Helmholtz, Herman (Excel-
lenz), 211
gramophone demonstration be-
fore, 212-215
von Hindenburg, Paul
birthplace at Hanover, 3
von Pirquet, Professor, 244
von Siemens, Werner (Doctor)
quoted on, the gramophone, 208
Wagner Theater, Bayreuth
acoustic qualities, 284
War
influence of chemistry, 206
Washington
described, 183, 184
during Grant's presidency, 23,
26
first electric light, 70
John Hay's description, 26
Watson, Thomas A.
Birth and Babyhood of tlie
Telephone, 59
examination of Berliner 's in-
vention, 110
work -with Bell, 58, 102
Western Union Telegraph Com-
pany
agreement with Bell Telephone
Company, 136
American Speaking Telephone
Company, a subsidiary,
124
annexation of Bell system con-
templated, 123
Bell patent rights offered to,
123
decision to enter telephone
field, 115
first electric journal published,
71
Gold and Stock Telegraph
Company, a subsidiary,
130, 135
Westinghouse Company
radio station, 263
Westinghouse, George
air brake invented, 42
Whitney, Eli
cotton gin invented, 42
Williams, Charles, 58
manufacturer of telephone in-
struments, 315
WUliams Factory, Boston
maker of telephone instru-
ments, 155
Wolfenbiittel, 8, 9, 288
Wonders
written by Berliner, 333
Woodward, Doctor, 240, 241
World War
part played by music, 225-226
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Eralle Berliner, maker of the
microphone, by Frederic William Wile*
Indianapolis, The Bobbs— Merrill company
[cl926 ]
353 p* illuss 23 cm*
74929
MBNU
07 NOV 77
502012 NEDDbp
26-19127
s'g'ss's 00074929 8