Berliner Gramophone – its discs identified with an etched-in "E. Berliner's Gramophone" as the logo – was the first disc record label in the world. Its records were played on Emile Berliner's invention, the Gramophone, which competed with the wax cylinder–playing phonographs that were more common in the 1890s and could record.
1897 Berliner Gramophone Record by George W. Johnson
Photo of ca. 1890 Kämmer & Reinhardt hand-crank gramophone in the collection of the Science Museum (UK).
Emile Berliner originally Emil Berliner, was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record used with a gramophone. He founded the United States Gramophone Company in 1894; The Gramophone Company in London, England, in 1897; Deutsche Grammophon in Hanover, Germany, in 1898; and Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada in Montreal in 1899. Berliner also invented what was probably the first radial aircraft engine (1908), a helicopter (1919), and acoustical tiles (1920s).
Emile Berliner
1897 Berliner Gramophone record
E. Berliner Toy Gramophone, 1889 (collection Musée des ondes Emile Berliner, Montreal)
Emile Berliner with a veiled woman