Gravesite of Emile Berliner and Family

Emile (originally Emil) Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, on May 20, 1851 Enticed by the offer of a clerkship in a store partly owned by a man named Behrend, and perhaps by a desire to escape the military duty that faced most young men in the year of the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner persuaded his parents to allow him to accept the job offer and to emigrate to America. In late March 1870 he left Hanover. Working alone in his rooming house he fashioned a new type of transmitter. In his small house in Washington, Berliner began working on additional improvements to Bell's telephone, selling the rights to his patents to the telephone company. Then in 1886 he began working on the invention that was to prove his most important contribution to the world. This was the development of the gramophone and the gramophone record.

He died in Washington, DC in 1929, and his final resting place is Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC.