1851-1929

German-born inventor who developed a helicopter that flew in 1919. Berliner came to the United States in 1870 to study physics. He developed a carbon microphone transmitter that was used by the Bell Telephone Company in their phones. The gramophone he designed was the first to use a flat disc rather than the cylinder shape proposed by Thomas Edison, and was bought by the RCA Company. In 1919, he designed one of the first helicopters that flew.