1977 is the 100th Anniversary of the recorded sound, an invention that has changed social structures and even life styles to the benefit of mankind. In April, 1877, Charles Cross, French poet, intellectual and inventor of a method of colour photography, had deposited with the Academic de Sciences in Paris a proposal for a machine to record and replay sound. At about the same time and quite independently, Thomas Alva Edison, while experimenting with means of transmitting signals by telegraph, discovered a method of recording and replaying intelligible words. Legend has it that the first sentence successfully recorded and replayed to the astonishment of the listeners was "Mary had a little lamb". On December 24, 1877, Edison applied for a patent which was in due course granted. It was the first patent to cover means of recording and replaying sound. In the same year, 1877, Emile Berliner successfully developed a method for manufacturing recorded discs quickly and cheaply in large quantities. Berliner has been described by many as the father of the Record Business. In May 1888 he demonstrated the working prototype of a 'disc playing' gramophone. In 1893 gramophones were first offered for sale to the public. The gramophone had arrived.
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone (phonograph in American English). He founded the Berliner Gramophone Company in 1895, 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 (chartered in 1904).
The stamp depicts a Berliner gramophone. The photograph is by courtesy of Polydor International, Hannover (W. Germany).
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