and disc-replicating process. The machine itself would not
be perfected until after 1896, the year that Eldridge Johnson
began to make spring-driven players for the Berliner
Gramophone Company. The Berliner Gramophone
Company supplied machines and recorded discs to the
independent National Gramophone Company, which in
turn sold the products in the United States. In 1897 the
Gramophone Company, Ltd., was started up in London
and the Gram-o-Phone Company was established in
Montreal. In 1898 Berliner, with his brothers Joseph and
Jacob, founded the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellshaft
manufacturing plant in Hannover.
In 1901 Berliner pooled his patent and trademark rights
with those of Eldridge Johnson, who formed the Victor
Talking Machine Company. Berliner subsequently became
interested in aeronautics; in 1908 he designed a lightweight
internal-combustion engine that became a widely imitated
prototype power plant for aircraft. Under his general
supervision, his son, Henry Berliner, designed a helicopter
that flew successfully as early as 1919. Returning to prob-
lems of sound reproduction, the elder Berliner in 1925
invented an acoustic tile for use in auditoriums and con-
cert halls.

Nikola Tesla

(b. July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austria-Hungary [now in Croatia]—d.
Jan. 7, 1943, New York City, N.Y., U.S.)

N

ikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor and
engineer who discovered and patented the rotating
magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current
machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of
electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United
States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of

7 Emil Berliner 7