Emil Berliner is granted his first patent…

Emil Berliner is granted his first patent for what he calls the "gramophone" in 1887.

The first gramophones record sound using horizontal modulation on a cylinder coated with a low resistance material such as lamp black, subsequently fixed with varnish and then copied by photoengraving on a metal playback cylinder.

This is similar to the method employed by Edison's machines.

Born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851 into a Jewish merchant family, Berliner had completed an apprenticeship to become a merchant, as was his family tradition.

While his real hobby is invention, he had worked as an accountant to make ends meet.

To avoid being drafted for the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner had migrated to the United States in 1870 with a friend of his father's, in whose shop he worked in Washington, D.C..

He had moved to New York and, living off temporary work, such as doing the paper route and cleaning bottles, he had studied physics at night at the Cooper Union Institute.

After some time working in a livery stable, he had become interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph, and had invented an improved telephone transmitter (one of the first type of microphones).

The patent had been acquired by the Bell Telephone Company.

Berliner had subsequently moved to Boston in 1877 and worked for Bell Telephone until 1883, when he returned to Washington and established himself as a private researcher.

He became a United States citizen in 1881 and had begun experimenting with methods of sound recording in 1886.