Emil Berliner naît à Hanovre dans une famille de commerçants juifs. 

Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929), originally Emil Berliner, was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for inventing the flat disc record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American English) and the Gramophone. He founded the United States Gramophone Company in 1894,[1] The Gramophone Company in London, England, in 1897, Deutsche Grammophon in Hanover, Germany, in 1898, Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada in Montreal in 1899 (chartered in 1904), and Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901 with Eldridge Johnson.