Berliner Gramophone Record
date: label: date made
content: 1898-05
name: label: referenced
content: Cullen, Joseph
label: referenced
content: Collins, William
label: maker
content: Berliner, Emile
notes: label: Description
content: Emile Berliner, a German immigrant who settled in Washington, D.C., profoundly influenced the direction of early sound-recording technology. In November 1887 he patented the first of a series of inventions that would result in a commercially successful disk record and a machine to play it on--the gramophone.
label: Description
content: This rare rubber record is about 7 inches in diameter. It was made in May 1898 and donated to the museum by Berliner himself. According to information inscribed by hand in the center of the disk, it plays a banjo duet of the tune "Narcissus," performed by Joseph Cullen and William Collins.
label: Description
content: Part of Berliner's success stemmed from his process that permitted mass-production of sound recordings. In that process, a performer made a master recording, a mold of that master was made, and then, from that mold, multiple disks could be pressed.
label: Description
content: In contrast, Berliner's main competition—Edison's phonograph and the Bell-Tainter graphophone—played recordings made on wax cylinders with vertically cut grooves. At first, the only way to make multiple copies of these cylinders was to make multiple originals, but by about 1900 a process for making mass-producing cylinders was devised. In the meantime Berliner's disk recordings, longer playing and more durable than cylinders, won over consumers. Berliner's design for a laterally cut disk record, playing at 78 revolutions per minute, became the industry standard.
label: Description
content: Berliner experimented with a variety of materials for records, including glass, celluloid, and hard rubber. He eventually settled on a shellac compound called Duranoid. Other manufacturers adopted the compound as well and continued to make records with it until the late 1940s. In search of a more durable material, Columbia Records introduced the vinyl long-playing 33 rpm disk record and RCA the three-minute 45-rpm disk.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
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content: Music & Musical Instruments
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content: Popular Entertainment
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content: Industry & Manufacturing
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content: National Treasures exhibit
publisher: label: Related Publication
content: Smart, James. R. Emile Berliner and Nineteenth-Century Disc Recordings
label: Related Publication
content: Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Emile Berliner
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: ME.308322
label: catalog number
content: 308322
label: accession number
content: 71816
objectType: label: Object Name
content: phonorecord
label: Object Name
content: sound recording
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wax (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall - catalog card: 7 in; x 17.78 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1/4 in x 8 1/2 in; x .635 cm x 21.59 cm