MAY - JUNE 2001

Engineering Hall of Fame

Emile Berliner and the Making of "Ma Bell"
(20 May 1851 - 3 August 1929)

by Michael N. Geselowitz

Aside from Thomas Edison’s incandescent lamp, if we were to pick two devices that characterize the rise of electrical engineering in the late 19^th century, they would probably be the phonograph and the telephone. The former, of course, is associated with Thomas Edison, while the latter is more frequently credited to Alexander Graham Bell (though Edison played his part there as well).

Credit should also go to a less well-known figure, who played an important role in the development of both the telephone and the telegraph: Emile Berliner.

Self-Made Man

Emile Berliner was born in Hanover (an independent kingdom now part of Germany,) on 20 May 1851 as the fourth of 11 children in a Jewish merchant family. His formal education ended at age 14, making him perhaps even more self-educated and "self-made" than Thomas Edison.

Berliner came to the United States in 1870, where he worked as a store clerk in Washington, D.C. This young immigrant had an insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge; he eventually left Washington determined to quench that thirst. After a stint as a traveling salesman, he settled for a time in New York, working at the laboratory of Dr. Constantine Fahlberg (who discovered saccharine) while taking classes at Cooper Union. He returned to Washington, D.C. in 1876.

Hooking Up With Bell

By this time, Bell’s telephone invention was making a big splash. Berliner decided to do some related experimenting on his own. By 1877, he had perfected a new type of telephone "transmitter" based on the principle of pressure-induced variable resistance between two metals (an idea originally developed by German telephone pioneer Johann Philipp Reis). He filed a patent for what today is called a microphone.

Bell learned of the invention and hired Berliner in 1878 to work with him in Boston. He had Berliner assign his patent to the Bell Telephone Company. He made the same move with Francis Blake, who had invented a similar transmitter that relied on contact between a metal and a carbon button. Both devices had their advantages, so Berliner combined their best attributes, and the Berliner-Blake transmitter became the Bell standard for some time. He patented one other useful telephone component for Bell: an induction coil.

Beyond the Telephone

His cleverness in solving the technical problems of his day did not stop there, however. In 1883, Berliner returned to Washington, D.C. In 1887, he patented the gramophone system, which included the first playback machine based on disk-shaped records, and an efficient method for duplicating the disks. In 1908, he developed a radial aircraft engine. He followed that up with a functional helicopter in 1919. In 1925, he invented acoustic tiles for dampening sound. Emile Berliner died in Washington, D.C. on 3 August 1929.

What About "Ma Bell"?

Successful in business as a result of his inventions, Berliner was also known as a progressive philanthropist; he supported a wide range of programs and issues, from supporting women in science to advocating milk pasteurization.

Despite his philanthropy and his prolific inventiveness, however, his greatest contribution to history may have been a legal one. With Berliner’s transmitter patent, Bell secured a virtual monopoly over such devices. Mysteriously, and anticipating recent arguments over "submarine patents," the patent filed in 1877 did not issue until 1891, giving Bell the monopoly until 1908 and leading to the creation of the monolithic "Ma Bell" that some of us remember.

Such an outcry arose from competitors and the public, that in 1893, the federal government sued the Bell Company over the Berliner patent. In 1897, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the victory to Bell. The rest, as they say, is history.

Michael N. Geselowitz is Director of the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University. He can be reached at m.geselowitz@ieee.org. Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at: www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/.