The Sound of the Eminent Victorians
Walter Harris introduces the retired soldier who brought sound recording to Britain.
Colonel George Edward Gouraud fought in the US cavalry during the American Civil War and received his country's highest award for valour, the Congressional Medal of Honour. On leaving the Army he joined the Customs service, but when George Pullman, inventor of the sleeping car, invited him to spread the gospel of luxury to the railways of Europe, the colonel enthusiastically accepted and set up shop in Paris in the early 1880s.
Gouraud’s father, a French emigrant to America, had imbued his son with the sense of adventure bestowed by being an inventor. He developed the camera, and founded the first American photographic magazine; his household was a stimulating one to grow up in. As it turned out, no invention was to stimulate Gouraud like the phonograph, for which he became an ardent apostle after meeting its inventor, Thomas Edison, not long after joining Pullman.
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