The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-05-20
BERLINER AND OTHER MEN WHO DEVELOPED TELEPHONES
 AND TALKING MACHINES

IrT-HE HISTORY of those two wonderful in IL Ventions the telephone and the talk ling machine, cannot be written without men 1 ton of the great achievements of Jewish in-
 ventor and scientist, Emile Berliner. He was l born in Hanover Germany sixty three years ago. and graduated from a technical institute, Sampson School, Wolfenbuttel when only fourteen years of age. At nineteen he came to
 America and early became interested in the Telephone, which was thu occupying the atten- ltion of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas A. Edl-
 son, Elisha Gray, Frederick A. Cover and other scientists on both sides of the Atlantic.
 Young Berliner had great confidence in the future of Bell s crude instrument ith which was shared by very few othe ITS 4and the SeotclL man had no sooner exhibited his sclever scien- than Berliner began to study means for lmprov- 1 ing it. The first practical result Of his thought was the loose contact transmitter, or microphone, which he produced in 1877, shortly after Bells experiments with a telephone line between Bos- ton and Salem. Tn April of the same year Ber- liner discovered that loose contact will act lteIephone receiver. A little later he was the first to use induction coil in connection with Itransmitters. Many other valuable inventions I in telephony stood to isscredif before the He brew inventive genius turned his attention to the invention of a talking machine.
 As early as 1877 Thomas A. Edison discov- Iered the principles on which the talking ma Ichine'' is based It was while engaged on ex- periments for totally different object and that
 Edison hit upon the phonograph His early instruments had numerous defects, and a de |cade passed after the original revelation before Edison took up the invention again and, in 1889, produced the modern phonograph In the meantime Berlfner had been working on a som eNhat similar invention, and in 1887 he in vented the gramophone This was the first talking machine oh utilizes groove of even |depth and varying direction, and in which the record groove not only vibrates but also propels the stylus across the record. Many improve ments have since been made by Berliner and others, and the Berliner machine is now one Of the most popular types and is to be found in homes all over the world.
 BerIiner has long been a leader in various Standardization movements, and has written nu- merolls pamphlets and articles dealing with the prevention of sickness and disease For many years he was actively engaged in an education- al campaign against the dangers of raw milk and other dairy products sss F. While Bell invented the telephone, and Edi- son, BerIiner, Marconi and many others have proved it, the true inventor and dseoyerer of Ithe principles of telep phony was a German scien- Hist to whom too little credit has been given Philip Reis Tn 1861 Refs exhibited partially lafticulate electric telegraph at Frankfort, and showed that variations in an electric Current caused by 8 vibrating membrane could repro fduce the necessary vibrations. Reis transmit
 
 Gray, whose application for a patent on the tel ephone was filed in Washington only . few hours after Prof. Bells application, improved Refs ephoIle, baltneither Reis Gray reap ed any financial reward from their Inventions Bridgeport has done it's share toward the development of the talking machine, and espec- IialIy to make machine at such moderate price lit might be sold to. every home. The inventive genius of the late Thomas H. Macdonald played Ian important part in making the instrument socially available on large scale.
 Edison now again has worked extraordi- nary improvements in voice reproduction, and probably may claim to be the superior of all talking machine inventors
 It remains true, however, thai few inven- tions spring at once, full armed, from the mind of anybody They are the work of many minds,
 and in sense of all the social improvement which has gone before. He usually gets the credit who adds to the work of others that touch which makes the thing socially and conn merciai1y available.
 |