In 1876 he was fascinated by the telephone, and set out to construct one on a different plan.

Several months later he had succeeded and was overjoyed to receive his first patent for a telephone transmitter.

He had by this time climbed up from his bottle-washing to be a clerk in a drygoods store in Washington; but he was still poor and as unpractical as most inventors.

Joseph Henry, the Sage of the American scientific world, was his friend, though too old to give him any help.

Consequently, when Edison, two weeks later, also invented a transmitter, the prior claim of Berliner was for a time wholly ignored.