J. Berliner Telephone Factory
By Bob Estreich
This company was started by Emile Berliner, the man who
sorted out Bell's telephone and made it a workable proposition. Berliner had
seen Bell's telephone in operation and set about building a better
instrument that would overcome the weaknesses of the Bell. He succeeded, and
filed for a patent for his improved telephone on 4 June 1877. It was a loose
contact transmitter, not unlike an earlier one by Philipp Reis, but Berliner
set it up so the contact was variable rather than true make-or-break. He
also invented an induction coil to put into the circuit to prevent dropouts
when the contacts broke apart under strong voice. The Patent application
came to the notice of the Bell company and they bought the rights to the
not-yet-patented transmitter for $50,000. They also employed Berliner to
solve their production problems for them.
Thomas Edison filed for a patent for a similar
transmitter, but his used fine carbon powder to give multiple contacts,
rather than Berliner's single contact. The two patents were ruled in
conflict by the Patents Office. Meanwhile American Bell had been offered a
new single-contact transmitter by Francis Blake. This had been patented by
Blake, and Bell decided to use it. Berliner refined it into a production
transmitter.
The Directors of American Bell now set about delaying
Berliner's patent. They used tactics such as taking months to reply to the
Patent Office's requests for information. Their aim was to hold up the
patent long enough so that when the Blake patent expired they could activate
the Berliner patent and retain control of the telephone for another
seventeen years. Following settlement of their legal battle with the
American Speaking Telephone Company, the holder of the Edison patent
application, American Bell now controlled all the important patents in
telephony. They wanted to keep it that way. Berliner was frustrated at the
inactivity on his first major invention, and left the company.
He went on to invent the Gramophone and to do work on
early helicopters, child health and acoustics.
Although he was now an American citizen, Berliner kept in
touch with his family in Germany. In 1883 he demonstrated a version of his
single-contact transmitter in Austria. Interest was strong so he set up a
company, J. Berliner Telephone Factory (Telephon-Fabrik Berliner AG) in
Hanover in Germany, to be run by his brother Jacob. The other brother,
Joseph, returned from the United States to become the factory's technical
director. He had spent several years studying the telephone in the Bell
workshops under the sponsorship of his brother Emile, and was a competent
technician and designer. Jacob became the company's business manager because
he was the only one who had experience running a business.
By World War 1 they had factories, agencies or assembly
works in half a dozen German cities, as well as Breslau (Silesia), Vienna
(1892, Austria), Budapest (1900, Turkey), Olmutz (1900, Moravia, Austria),
Paris (1900, Societe Francaise des Telephones System Berliner) and London
(1900). Their London factory was renamed Sterling
Telephone and Electric Company shortly before the War. They also had as
an agent Marsh, Son & Co of 15 Gerrard St, Soho. The 1904 Marsh catalogue
shows almost the full range of Berliner telephones, but some of these would
have been in conflict with Edison's patents. Sterling sold only a small
range of Berliner phones.
At this point there were few international patent
recognition treaties in place. Builders like Siemens and Halske in Germany
and Ericssons in Sweden had been able to copy and improve on Bell's
invention without patent problems. The Berliner company produced telephones
in Germany that conflicted with the Bell company's Bell, Berliner and Edison
patents, such as an 1893 coal grain transmitter that would have conflicted
with Edison's early carbon powder model. They had to be careful not to sell
into countries where the Bell patents had been granted. Their transmitters
of the time are marked "Use Not Licensed Under Any U.S. Patents".
The company was renamed Bayerische Telephon-Fabrik AG (BTA)
in 1918 or 1920. By this time it was starting to experience financial
difficulties. After the First World War the German market was restricted due
to the developing Depression and post-War punitive measures, and only those
companies with overseas holdings were able to carry on successfully. BTA's
other European factories and companies had been seized during the War. BTA
arranged a share exchange deal with C Lorenz AG, which gave them the
technology to produce the new wireless sets for domestic use from 1923. They
appear to have been building wireless sets in cooperation with Lorenz, as
many of their sets use a Lorenz chassis. They were falling under the
influence of International Telephone & Telegraph (the owners of Lorenz)
through share buyouts, and ITT was reselling Lorenz equipment to other
makers for re-badging. It worked for a while and exports were begun.
In spite of this, at the May 1927 meeting shareholders
were told that the company was in a financially weak position. The wireless
factories were mostly shut down. BTA did not have the resources to take a
major role in the automation of the German Post Office system, and missed
out on other valuable contracts as the bigger companies and groups virtually
took control of the market. By 1930 about 72 percent of the market was
controlled by Siemens and Halske, and most of the rest by Standard
Elektrizitatgesellschaft (owned by ITT). In 1931 the company was renamed
Tefag (Telephon Aktiengesellschaft vorm. J. Berliner). It survived a little
longer by concentrating on wireless sets and doing contract work for other
companies like Fuld, but it did not survive World War 2.
The Transmitters
The single contact transmitter is a very compact unit, much smaller than
the Blake. It could be built into a handset, and did not suffer from packing
as the carbon granule transmitters did.
The later transmitter acknowledged the performance
improvements of carbon granule transmitters over single-contact ones. A
Marsh & Son catalogue advertises that "This instrument has a world-wide
reputation as the loudest and best long-distance Transmitter. The Carbon
Granules resting upon the diaphragm are continually disturbed by the action
of the voice, thereby preventing the Granules from becoming packed". The
transmitter consisted of a top and bottom diaphragm of carbon, with the top
one fixed to the case. The case was screwed together until the granules were
at a suitable level of compression. Grooves machined in the lower diaphragm
gave a larger surface area, which improved the signal level. A mouthpiece of
black polished papier-mâché fed the sound to the bottom of the lower
diaphragm, and the movement of this diaphragm kept the granules from packing
down.
A number of versions of the design were made over the
next ten years or so. The large diaphragm gave excellent transmission
compared with the Hunnings transmitter coming into use by Western Electric.
The earlier version, shown at left, could be adjusted by the milled nut
shown at the top. In the later versions adjustment was by screwing the two
halves of the case together. The version at right was used on later handsets
from around 1913.
References:-
Catalogs, various, courtesy of Remco Enthoven,
R J Chapuis "100 Years of Telephone Switching 2003"
Frank Southard "American Industry in Europe"
F Allsopp "Telephones: Their Construction and Fitting" 1897
Marsh, Son & Co "Catalogue of July 1st, 1904" London
www.radiomuseum.org website "Radio Producers - Information and history of
Tefag"
"Electricity In The Service Of Man " 1886
AT&T WorldNet "Emile Berliner"
http://home.att.net/~berliner-ultrasonics.berlemil.html#emile
Todays Engineer, Engineering Hall of Fame "Emile Berliner and the Making of
"Ma Bell"
Peter Schulze "The Berliners - a Jewish Family in Hanover (1773-1943)"
United States Library of Congress, Emile Berliner Collection
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