Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) was a German-born American inventor. He developed the disc record gramophone. 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.

So we owe him our favourite playbacks.