Intellectual Property Law for Engineers, Scientists, and Entrepreneurs. Howard B. Rockman
Scott's vibrations were made by speaking into the large end of a megaphone whose small end included a thin diaphragm that could freely vibrate. A thin brush attached to the diaphragm would make tiny tracks on blackened glass. These lateral vibrations could then be photographed and studied. Apparently, it never occurred to Scott or anyone else at the time that if these tiny tracks could be fixed, and the stylus passed through the tracks, the reverse process would take place and sounds would be reproduced through the large end of the megaphone.
Starting with Scott's phonautograph, Berliner first tried to replicate the thin tracing Scott made on blackened glass on a sturdier substance through a photoengraving process. Berliner was unaware that this was a practice that had been previously advanced by a Frenchman, Charles Cros, in a paper written in April 1877 and deposited with the French Academy. In this paper, Cros for the very first time, stated a theory for recording and reproducing sound. However, Cros never acted upon his theory. Had he done so, he would have been the inventor of the talking machine and not Thomas Edison. Edison was never aware of Cros or his paper, and Edison’s tin foil machine owed nothing to Cros’ theory. Meanwhile, Berliner found that trying to photoengrave the surface of a glass disc led to problems, so he then turned to an etching process.
After attempting many different substances, Berliner turned to zinc. After many failed attempts, he developed a process for coating a zinc disc made from regular stone maker's zinc, with a beeswax and cold gasoline mixture. The coating was then cleared away with fine lines made by a stylus attached to a mica diaphragm so that it would vibrate. After coating the blank reverse side of the disc with varnish, the disc was immersed in an acid bath. After a certain time, the acid etched the fine lines into grooves on the zinc, leaving the remaining parts of the disc untouched. With the vibrations fixed into the zinc, the disc was able to be placed on a turntable, and the sound reproduced with a steel stylus.
Early disc records were made using this process. Berliner’s method, however, required two machines, one for each process. As a name for the whole operation, the inventor coined the word “gramophone.” His earlier patents on this device were No. 372,786 dated November 8, 1887, and No. 382,790 dated May 15, 1888. Berliner then faced the problem of finding a process to reproduce the master zinc record. First, the master had to be electroplated resulting in a metal reverse, or negative record, with grooves projecting outward instead of inward. The negative could then be used to stamp positive copies of a substance that would hold the impression exactly.
Berliner tried numerous substances, including Plaster of Paris and sealing wax, with unsatisfactory results. It then occurred to him that a new substance on the market called celluloid might provide the answer. Berliner contacted J.W. Hyatt, the inventor of celluloid, and Mr. Hyatt felt certain he could provide exact duplicates of Berliner’s records. However, it soon became clear that the material could not withstand the pressure of repeated playings using big, hard steel needles under the full weight of tone arm and horn. Therefore, Berliner abandoned the celluloid process. If you locate an early celluloid disc today, you probably have a very rare and valuable item in your hands.
Berliner next began contacting manufacturers of hard rubber items. He found that warming the rubber made it possible to stamp copies of a zinc negative.
Berliner began marketing his gramophone in the early 1890s. The first samples of laterally cut disc records were issued in Germany, and not in the United States. In 1887, Berliner had obtained patents in both Germany and England for the gramophone. In 1889, he went to Germany to demonstrate his invention to German scientists. While visiting his native Hanover, he was approached by members of the firm of Kammerer and Reinhardt, a toy manufacturer in the town of Waltershausen, who offered to place small discs and small hand‐turned machines on the toy market, and Berliner agreed. For several years, five inch Berliner Gramophone records were manufactured in Germany‚ and several were exported to England. Some of the first discs were made of celluloid, while the later discs were made in part of rubber. However, this was a very small operation.
Subsequently, Berliner returned to the United States and entered into an agreement with several New York investors, and they formed the American Gramophone Company. The company never got off the ground, and then Berliner organized the United States Gramophone Company in Washington, D.C. He stated that he formed the new company at the same time that he switched from celluloid to rubber discs. A patent application for the hard rubber discs was submitted to the U.S. Patent Office in 1893, and the rubber discs entered the market in 1894, the year following the application for the rubber records patent. Today, many consider that that creation of the United States Gramophone Company in Washington, D.C. in 1894 was the true beginning of the American record industry. Gramophone discs and machines reached rapid popularity. Until 1894, all available records were wax cylinders designed to be played on cylinder machines. These wax cylinders were easily broken and did not last long. Also, they could not be mass produced and could be copied only in limited numbers. Moreover, cylinders employed a vertical or hill and dale cut, and the machines had to have a feed screw attachment to prevent the reproducer stylus from jumping out of the grooves, and the feed screw easily came out of adjustment.
Berliner’s disc record was made of hard rubber that was difficult to break and could be mass produced so that the discs could be widely marketed. His discs had a constant deep groove with sound vibrations on the walls; thus, the stylus could be lodged down into the groove, and the groove itself would pull the stylus with its attached tone arm and horn across the face of the disc. One other advantage was that the discs had a blank center area where the title, performer, and disc number could be etched, or a permanent paper label could be attached. The fact that the gramophone machine could not be used for making home recordings as a cylinder machine could does not seem to have had much effect on Berliner’s invention's popularity with the public.
Soon after the beginning of the United States Gramophone Company, Berliner lost faith in rubber pressings. He then turned to the Duranoid Company, which made shellacked electrical parts. In 1895, Berliner sent Duranoid a nickel‐plated stamper, and the company returned to him a shellac pressing that was in every way superior to the hard rubber pressings. By the middle of 1895, all Berliner discs were being made by Duranoid using the shellac process.
In 1896, Berliner licensed a group of businessmen to market and distribute his products. They formed the Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia and hired Frank Seaman to organize the National Gramophone Company in New York to handle the distribution of the discs and machines. Recordings were made in Washington and Philadelphia and the stampers were made in the Washington laboratory, and pressings were made by Duranoid.
The major problem Berliner faced at this time was with the playback machines. Originally, these were hand turned. Spring motors were attached to some, but the springs were rather weak and required a high degree of power to rotate the gramophone with its heavy tone arm and horn, compared to a cylinder machine and its floating stylus. Berliner then began working with a machine shop owned by Eldridge Johnson in Camden, New Jersey, to manufacture machines with spring motors. Johnson eventually designed a gramophone using a spring driven turntable of his own design. The Johnson machine, while not entirely satisfactory, was the best that could be produced at the time.
On September 29, 1897, a tragedy occurred when the Washington Traction Company, where the laboratory of the Gramophone Company was located, burned to the ground. The Gramophone Company lost at least 100 zinc masters that had not been pressed, as well as all of its equipment. Everything had to be replaced.
During the late 1890s, the market for Berliner's discs began to expand into foreign countries. Berliner had obtained patents in Germany and England, and in the following years, patents were obtained in Italy, France, Belgium, and Austria. In April 1898, he formed the Berliner Gramophone Company of London. Two gentlemen were sent to Germany to form a German branch with the main office in Hanover. Eventually, there were gramophone companies in all the major countries of Europe including Russia. Berliner’s sons, Herbert and Edgar, opened the Berliner Gramophone Company of Montreal, Canada, in 1899. Subsequently, after Berliner lost his fight against illegal competitors, the Berliner name was gradually dropped from each corporation so that, for instance, the London branch became simply the Gramophone Company.
In 1898, the first of illegal recordings generated