ABSTRACT
Irish/American tenor, born in Belfast. Coming early to the U.S., he sang in churches and in vaudeville, and was a member of the Manhasset Quartet. He began recording in 1891, for the New Jersey Phonograph Co., and went on to inscribe his “strident, piercing voice” (Walsh) for all the major labels. He had 41 records in the 1896 Columbia cylinder catalog. In the late 1890s Gaskin was a prolific Edison artist, with about 100 cylinders made; he sang popular items like “Annie Laurie” (#1503), “Sally in Our Alley” (#1540), and “Sweet Rosie O’Grady” (#1551). Gaskin made the first Berliner record in Montreal, “God Save the Queen,” before February 1899. An earlier U.S. Berliner was “I’se Gwine Back to Dixie” (#192; 1895). He was said to earn $25,000 a year for his appearances and recordings, but his career died out after 1900. He made a final disc for Pathé in 1916. [Brooks 1979; Moogk 1975; Walsh 1944/10 with corrections in 1952/5.]
French inventor, photographer, and motion picture producer, born in Paris. He has a place in the history of sound recording as the first person to speak publicly on film, in an address to the Societe Française de la Photographie, November 1902. Gaumont founded a company bearing his name to make and sell photographic equipment in 1885, and then was a backer and collaborator of inventor Georges Demeny-this led to the production of the film apparatus called the Bioscope in 1895. He made feature films in the early 1900s, both in London and Paris, and established branches in Germany and America. The first practical sound system for films, linking a projector and phonograph electrically, was his work; in his demonstration cited earlier the sound was faint, so he improved it with a compressed air amplifier. His firm used the air-jet principle to make the Elgephone disc record player (operated with a gas jet) in 1906. He also made two-minute wax cylinders.
