“Berliner Gram-O-Phone”

Emile Berliner invented and patented his Gramophone record player in 1887, at a time when Thomas Edison had cornered the market in sound recording and playback with his cylinders and cylinder players. Berliner—who also invented a transmitter that Bell Telephone Company purchased and used—set up a sound lab in his Washington, D.C., apartment, where he revolutionized sound recording by inventing a method of recording onto flat discs rather than cylinders. By 1895 he had secured enough financial backing to create the Berliner Gramophone Company. His gramophones needed several modifications before attaining commercial success—a spring motor supplanted the hand-crank mechanism, and shellac proved better than rubber-based discs—but flat discs and players soon became the favored format, not least because they required considerably less storage space.