Carbon MicrophoneOn March 4, 1877 the American inventor Emile Berliner created carbon microphone. The year before that Alexander Graham Bell also created a microphone, called, however, a liquid transmitter. It was then that Berliner saw it and decided that he could make a device no worse than the Bell's one. When Bell learned of the Berliner's microphone, he began a legal action against him, but the court unexpectedly came down on the Berliner's side. Then Bell decided to act in a different way: the patent granted to Berliner was bought for 50 thousand dollars, and the inventor himself was hired by Bell Telephone Company as a senior specialist on telephone equipment.So what is the benefit of the Berliner's microphone over the Bell's one? The point is that before invention of the carbon microphone, sound amplification was not possible (as there were no amplifiers) and high-voltage modulation in a liquid microphone was not possible, because high voltage potential caused the device to break down (the current flowing through the liquid caused electrolysis, which resulted in dissolved electrodes and inadequate sound transmissionAnd in the Berliner's microphone, sound impacts a graphite plate (later, carbon powder) that can be of considerable size, thus making it possible to modulate high DC voltage and, in turn, to transmit a signal at a considerable distance.That is why for a century carbon microphones were used in those cases, when a powerful sound was required, and the quality of the sound wasn't really important.
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