The German-American Emile Berliner (alongside David. E. Hughes) was one of the inventors of the carbon microphone, a component in the Bell telephone. He sold his patent in 1877 to Alexander Graham Bell in a lucrative deal. As a result, he was financially independent and able to found his own laboratory. This portrait was based on historical photographs, which were used by the artist Gottfried Helnwein to paint it for the German Postal Museum in 1990. It is part of series of 9 paintings called the "Pioneers of the Telephone."