EMILE BERLINER and FAMILY - continued:
    Annotations in my copy of Emile's Biography
    Other German Berliners.

Emile and Henry Berliner Aviation Page:
    Henry Adler Berliner - aviation, helicopter, autogyro,

HANNOVER BERLINERS:
    Other German Berliners.
    The Berliners of Hannover 1720 - 1997".

Emile Berliner

Here, through the great courtesy of le Musée des Ondes Émile Berliner (the Museum of Emile Berliner Discs), in Montréal, is a ca. 1902 Canadian Berliner record, #871, the Frolic Polka, a piccolo solo by Mr. D. A. Lyons:   (new URL - 04 Mar 07)

(photo courtesy of le Musée des Ondes Émile Berliner - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail image - click on picture for larger image.]
CREDIT:  Seven-inch record, Berliner Gramophone, Montréal, ca 1902.
(Musée des Ondes Émile Berliner, Montréal - Image No. 1996.1580).

The Library of Congress released its presentation, Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry, a collection which contains a selection of more than 400 items from the Emile Berliner Papers and 108 Berliner sound recordings from the Library of Congress's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (for more details, see the Emile Berliner Continuation Page 1).

In England, on 15 Sep 1897, Barry Owens, manager of The Gramophone Co., purchased Francis Barraud's famous painting, which was then known as "Dog and Trumpet" and is now universally known and loved as "His Master's Voice", for £100; it was first used on their "Record Supplement" for January 1900.  Thus, the little dog, Nipper³, its official trademark ("His Master's Voice") from 1908 on, was NOT Berliner's pet dog after all!  Far worse yet, Barraud painted Nipper in front of an Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph and The Gramophone Co. paid him to REPAINT it!  Later the U. S. company became the Victor Talking Machine Company to celebrate its "victory" over Edison in a patent fight.  Then Emile and his son, Henry A(dler). Berliner, invented the world's first practical helicopter (1919) - actually just originally an autogyro, on the modified frame of a French light aircraft, which crashed on its maiden flight and ended up under a staircase at the Smithsonian, per grandson Oliver's letter to me of 24 Apr 98 - but never commercialized it.  Henry went on to found several aircraft companies in the '20s (Berliner-Joyce⁴, EEMCO, ERCO, Aircoupe) {see below}.  There are exhibits on both Emile and Henry in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and National Air & Space Museum.  The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), under David Sarnoff^@, acquired Victor in 1929; Emile Berliner died on 03 August of that year.  Grandson Oliver directs a Hollywood organization that gives the annual "MAKER OF THE MICROPHONE AWARD" in Emile's honor and is a patron of the City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society, which honors Berliner (among other pioneers).  Oliver's reminiscences about Emile were published in the "Antique Phonograph News" ca. 1992 and I quote below from a letter from Oliver to me on 06 May 1992.  Emile's grave is in his family plot in historic Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D. C., near the famous Adams memorial, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, popularly known as "Grief".

NOTES:

2 - In Canada, the corporate name is variously shown as Berliner Gramophone Co. or Berliner Gram-o-phone Co.; the latter is correct.  Emile was President until 1924 and his son, Herbert S. Berliner, ran the company as Vice President and General Manager until 1921, when he left to run a competitive disk pressing operation, the first independent Canadian disc-pressing plant, the Compo Company, Ltd. (which he had founded in 1918, later Decca, then MCA), in Lachine, Québec, both of which he then headed!  In 1921, Emile's other son, Edgar Maurice Berliner (Oliver's father) assumed the Vice Presidency of BGC.  It was Edgar who sold BGC to Victor in 1924, thus beginning the Victor Talking Machine Co. of Canada., although he stayed on as President until 1930.  VTMC became RCA Victor Company (of Canada) in 1929 and then was renamed BMG Music Canada in 1987.  I am indebted to the National Library of Canada/Bibliothèque nationale du Canada for a wealth of information, partially linked herein, and heartily recommend that you visit their fabulous site/visitez là.  Also in Quebec/Aussi à Québec, visit the/visitez le Musée des Ondes Émile Berliner (the Museum of Berliner Discs), à Montréal; their site was (like so many Québecois places) seulement en Français; they now have a new site with English text, as well!  I was delighted to learn that the museum is in the old Berliner/Victor factory (which may well still say "Home of the Victrola" on its side wall.!   (new Musée URL - 04 Mar 07)

3 - Al and Linda at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have a special page on Nipper in which they document most convincingly this totally different (horrendous? sacrilegious?), and exceedingly interesting, story, q.v.  There are even sites just about Nipper at Nipperscape and Nipperhead, as well as variations on "His Master's Voice", such as "His Master's Breath" and "Her Master's Breath" brought to us by the Canadian Antique Phonograph Society!  If that isn't documentation enough, look at EMI's, Tony Gracyk's, and Heriot-Watt University/Edinburgh Business School's (Creating a Spin) fantastic Berliner history sites!  Oliver advises (24 Apr 98) that the family (and EMI) use the term "Nipperie" for the countless souvenirs; EMI just published a second book of Nipperie, hundreds of pages long!

4 - The USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, has the sole (?) surviving Berliner-Joyce P-16!  The Berliner-Joyce XP-16 (S/N 29-326) was built after Berliner-Joyce won a contract competition with Curtiss and Boeing in April 1929.  The two-seat fighter was initially powered by a supercharged Conqueror engine driving a 2-bladed propeller giving it a top speed of 185 mph.

Note also that this page is acknowledged by the Hebrew History Federation, Ltd., which has two pages on their Website devoted to "Emil{sic} Berliner; An Unheralded Genius", "Part I - The Early Years", and and "Part II - The Later Years", by Samuel Kurinsky (links).  The two pages noted here represent a highly-detailed and slightly different and most interesting take on the life of this most inspired and inspiring man, with lots of new material on his various inventions (gramophone, helicopter, Ercoupe, etc.); I strongly recommend that you look at them, but do come back.

* 22 May 98 - Seagrams (owned by the Bronfman family of Montréal) announced it was buying Polygram (and thus Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft), thereby creating the largest single such firm in the world!

@ - not directly related to Emile Berliner, the Website of the MIT Club of New York records that in 1916 the Club chartered the steamer Bunker Hill to take 350 alumni to the ceremonies celebrating the move of MIT's campus from Boston to Cambridge; as part of that occasion, the Marconi Company demonstrated the use of ship-to-shore radio telephony - the radio operator was none other than that same David Sarnoff!