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Emile Berliner emigrated from Hanover, Germany to Washington, DC at the age of 19. He studied at the Cooper Institute (now Cooper Union), worked as an assistant in a chemistry lab, and sold dry goods to support himself. Within six years, he had re-invented the telephone and invented the gramophone, making both appropriate for mass production.

Emile Berliner (1851-1929) Credit: invent.org

Berliner invented a carbon microphone transmitter for use in the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell

. He sold the rights to Bell Telephone Company. Later, Berliner began work on a method of sound recording. In 1887, he devised a method for mapping out sounds in a cirucular, wavering groove etched into a flat disk (first of glass, then of zinc, then of plastic); the sounds were "read" by a needle. Berliner sold the rights to his "Gramophone" to the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA), making them ready for production.

Berliner's innovations eventually made the phonograph and telephone standard household items. In 1911, he established a fellowship in his mother's name for the promotion of women in scientific research.