Bernard Roux

This page

This page presents a preliminary account of the audio activities of the French engineer and industrialist Bernard Roux (1875-1958).

It is part of the site Classical 'Society' Records by Nick Morgan.

Documented from 1905 until the late 1930s, Bernard Roux’s audio products and services were an integral part of his overall business – making and selling early plastics, notably insulators and moulded components.

A little-known pioneer of audio technology in France, Roux’s firm made private and commercial recordings for a range of clients and also produced a small number of innovative electrical audio devices.

For dates of creation and latest update, please see Page information.

Genesis

This page grew out of an attempt to investigate a single recording made by Bernard Roux's firm. Initially, I planned to cover it in a simple (if lengthy) blog post, which I started researching and writing in early December 2022. I soon realised that Bernard Roux's firm was not a small studio making bespoke recordings for private clients, as I had imagined, but an industrial manufacturing concern, among whose products and services were recordings and audio equipment. On 29 December 2022 I abandoned the blog post and started work on this page. (The creation date shown in Page information is the date when this page, drafted on my computer, was first uploaded to the internet.)

Sources

I carried out research for this page in the UK, mostly at home, occasionally in the British Library at St. Pancras.

Besides the Roux recording which especially interested me, I knew of a few others in institutional collections. Some of those held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) – though not all – have been digitized and made freely accessible via its digital portal Gallica. I even owned one Bernard Roux test pressing myself, as well as commercially issued discs which I gradually learned were also produced by Roux, and while working on this page I have bought a few more. They have all been digitized and the transfers uploaded to the US non-profit repository Internet Archive.

Most of these recordings have survived as test pressings, with labels which give away little or nothing about their contents or intended uses. Fortunately, other sources have proved rich in information about Roux's businesses and achievements. By far the richest are the historical newspapers, periodicals, directories, official bulletins and other publications (mostly in French) which are freely accessible in full text via institutional websites, notably Gallica, the BnF’s commercial partner RetroNews and the Internet Archive. One vexing and perplexing omission from the BnF’s print digitization programme (to date) is France's important heritage of historical audio and record magazines (Musique et radio, Machines parlantes et radio, Phono-radio-musique, L’édition musicale vivante, Le Guide Bleu des Nouveaux Disques etc.); I sincerely hope we will be able to read these one day, before it's too late. Historical patents, on the other hand, can be freely retrieved from online databases, and some genealogical information is accessible online in French municipal archives; for that, though, you generally need to know where and when an individual was born, which often means subscribing to a commercial genealogical website such as Ancestry or Geneanet.

Other discographical sources I have consulted include the BnF’s online catalogue, internet sales listings, and collectors’ and enthusiasts’ websites. In the spring of 2023, searching for information on small French record labels, I discovered Jerome Moncada’s website Label Gallery Française, an ongoing survey which promises to be exhaustive and indispensable. Where possible, all these and other sources are cited below (see also Acknowledgements).

I have found no reference anywhere to surviving personal papers of Bernard Roux or business papers of his companies. Extensive and informative as the above sources are, a full, detailed account of Roux's life, career and legacy will probably require travel to France and consultation of sources accessible only off line.

Translations

All translations into English are mine, except where noted. I apologise for writing in English about a French subject, drawing mainly on French sources. Fortunately, after running another page from my site through a well-known online machine translator, I can reassure anyone who doesn't read English that it produces pretty satisfactory results.

Disambiguation

Bernard Roux is a common French name. The person this page is about had contemporary namesakes active in various industries and professions. For instance, another Bernard Roux was an employee of the transnational Liebig concern and, reportedly, the inventor of Viandox, a long-lived brand of meat extract launched some time after World War I by Liebig's French subsidiary. The same or perhaps a different person co-founded an animal fat-rendering company.

The subject of this page traded on two 'Roux processes' (procédés Roux); again, there was at least one other contemporary 'Roux process', although it was not exploited commercially until slightly later. Also known as the procédé Roux-Color (and variations thereof), this was a colour film-projection process, invented by two brothers not related to Bernard Roux.

Metonymy

Throughout this page, the name (Bernard) Roux is used to denote both the man and his various companies, when using the latter's full, official names would seem verbose and redundant. So, if I write that a work or artist was 'recorded by Roux', I do not literally mean that Bernard Roux himself operated the recording equipment – I very much doubt he ever did – or supervised a recording session but, as I hope the context will make clear, that one or more recordists employed by him did so, or that his company as a whole executed the recording programme or contract under discussion, and so on.

Life

Bernard Roux was born on 30 June 1875 in his maternal grandfather's home in Fontaine-lès-Dijon, a suburb of Dijon, capital of the eastern département of Côte d'Or in Burgundy. Bernard's father Alexandre Roux was a notary in Dijon, where he lived with his wife Marie-Bernarde, née Mugnier. The Roux family was affluent and also owned a country property 35 km outside Dijon, midway between the communes of Trouhans and Les Maillys. Bernard had at least one older brother, Marcel, who died in 1918. Roux's father, meanwhile, had died in 1913.

At an unknown date Bernard Roux moved to Paris, probably for his education. He remained there for the rest of his life. For some years, Roux listed his father's country residence as a second address in Paris directories; this country property was sold during the 1920s.

No record of military service by Bernard Roux during World War I has come to light. Aged 39 in August 1914, he was perhaps too old to be called up, or else he engaged in industrial production deemed of national importance.

On 30 August 1924, in Paris's 14th arrondissement, where he had lived for several years, Bernard Roux married Marguerite Françoise Andrée Eléonore Baudevin, born in Saint-Etienne in 1897 and also resident in Paris. The couple lived together in Paris for the rest of their lives, and had four children: Marie (born 1927?), Marcel (born 17 February 1929), Charles-Bernard (born 2 December 1930) and Charles (born 1930).

Roux's wife Marguerite predeceased him, on 21 October 1955, at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.

Bernard Roux died on 7 May 1958 at the family's Paris home.

Education

Bernard Roux received his primary education in Dijon, where he attended the Catholic École Saint-François de Sales from 1887 to 1892.

In October 1892 Roux was enrolled into Paris's prestigious Collège Stanislas, a private Catholic secondary school.

Roux commenced his higher education by enrolling in 1897 as a physical engineer at the École Municipale de Physique et Chimie Industrielles, or EMPCI, in Paris (now the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, or ESPCI). Details of his specialisation(s), graduation and qualification(s) are yet to be obtained.

It is not clear whether Roux later obtained a further higher qualification. From 1919 onwards, Paris trade directories list him as 'ingénieur E.P.C.' This usually denoted a graduate of the state engineering academy, the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (now the École des ponts ParisTech); but the École was closed for the duration and in any case Roux was of the wrong age to enrol. The acronym presumably referred to his training at the EMPCI.

Early career

Patents

Soon or perhaps immediately after graduating from the EMPCI, Roux entered the industry in which he would remain active for the rest of his working life: the manufacture of rubber derivatives and their application in a range of products. This career was built on the exploitation of more than forty patents, granted over as many years. Approximately two thirds were granted in France, the remainder elsewhere. The first few patents relate to insulating plastics derived from rubber and techniques for producing them; these were soon followed by others relating to gramophone records and electronics. Roux's own patents, and others naming him (as applicant or assignee), can be found and accessed in the online databases of France's National Institute of Industrial Property, the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Where relevant, patents are cited below, but they are not described or examined in detail on this page.

Ebonite and Ebonitine

In 1902 Roux was granted his first known patent, in Denmark, for a 'Procedure for the production of an insulating material'; he perhaps devised this method while still at the EMPCI. Its Danish title is an almost exact equivalent of that of a French patent which he would be granted five years later.

1902 was also the year in which Victor Karavodine, a Russian émigré resident in Paris, was granted a patent in France for a method of manufacture of a new material, derived from vulcanized rubber; its name, Ebonitine, clearly echoed that of the older, well-established hard rubber, Ebonite. (The name Ebonitine was not itself new: a British company had marketed a very similarly-named substance in the 1860s, and in the mid-1890s another acted as the British agent for France's Société Industrielle des Téléphones, among whose products were both Ebonite and Ebonitine.)

Karavodine also had an interest in Ebonite, obtaining a patent for its 'regeneration' in 1904, which he assigned in 1905 to Bernard Roux; Roux later obtained a patent of addition to it. Also in 1904, Roux applied on Karavodine's behalf for a patent in the USA on the 'Treatment and Utilization of Waste Vulcanized Rubber and Ebonite', granted in 1906 and likewise assigned to Roux. Another patent transfer by Karavodine to Roux had been made in Italy in 1902. The two men clearly had some kind of partnership, although there is no clear trace of it outside these patents. And although Roux would build his business on making and selling Ebonitine, and always advertised it as produced by the 'Roux process' or 'processes' (procédé/s Roux), no report has yet been found of a transfer by Karavodine to Roux of the patent on Ebonitine.

Ebonite was already used in the manufacture of many products – among them, audio cylinders, discs and player parts; Ebonitine, meanwhile, was patented specifically as an insulator, but soon also attracted interest from the gramophone trade. In 1908 the marque 'Ultima' was registered in Paris for discs made of 'ebonitine or any other material'. The same year, Louis Boduin of Amiens registered Ebonitine as trademark of a product 'intended to lubricate talking machine discs', and by 1910 Boduin was advertising Ebonitine as a preservative which, he claimed, protected discs against wear, giving them an 'unlimited lifespan' and 'reviving worn records'. In 1909 another entrepreneur, based in Auxerre in Burgundy, had also advertised Ebonitine for the same purpose. Across the Atlantic, a US textbook described Ebonitine as 'A hard rubber substitute used for phonograph records.' In 1911, 'Ultima' was again registered in Paris as a marque of ebonitine discs.

1907

By 1907 Roux was involved in a business apparently named Ateliers « Ebonitine », which manufactured and traded in this and other 'moulded insulating components' (pièces isolantes moulées). The constitution of this business and its ownership are still unclear: no notices or reports of its formation have yet been located, despite the fact that making such details public was a legal requirement.

The first trade directories to list Ateliers « Ebonitine » associate it unambiguously with Roux, who clearly had a leading interest in it, and was presumably exploiting his and Karavodine's patents, assigned to him. The business's main address was 144, rue du Chemin-Vert, in Paris's 11th arrondissement, not far from the western corner of the Père Lachaise cemetery. In addition, it maintained workshops (ateliers) and an 'industrial testing laboratory' (laboratoire d’essais industriels) approximately one hour's walk away, at numbers 2 and 4, rue Esquirol, in the 13th arrondissement, near the Salpêtrière hospital. As far as can be ascertained from modern photographs published online, the premises in the rue du Chemin-Vert were located in an ordinary Parisian residential apartment block, possibly in a courtyard. The rue Esquirol was more obviously light-industrial: the area contained many workshops, while a notorious nearby haunt of rag-pickers had only recently been demolished. As Roux's businesses evolved over the following thirty years, they remained at these locations (with variations) for his entire career.

Trade directories afford detailed snapshots of Roux's activities during these three decades. In the earliest relevant directory, for 1907, 'Roux process' Ebonitine appears under the following headings:

Bois durci (a mid-19th century plastic, for which Ebonitine presumably advertised as a substitute)
Ebonite (Ebonitine advertised as a substitute)
Electricité (Ebonitine advertised for 'moulded insulating components')
Isolants et isolateurs (Ebonitine advertised for insulators)
Ivorine (another mid-19th century plastic, for which, again, Ebonitine presumably advertised as a substitute, in 'moulded components for electrical and photographic equipment, knife-handles, ink-wells etc., black and in colours; gramophone discs a speciality')
Matières plastiques ('moulded insulating components')
Phonographes (two entries for 'Ebonitine diaphragms', plus another stating, 'phonograph and gramophone pressing a speciality. Metal matrices, discs, diaphragms.')
Sonneries et signaux électriques, télégraphiques, à air, etc. ('moulded insulating components' for bells, electric signalling systems etc.)
Télégraphie ('moulded insulating components')
Téléphones ('moulded insulating components')
Traction électrique ('moulded insulating components')

Of course, the above listings are not proof that Ebonitine was used for any of the advertised purposes. Nor does the directory reveal anything about the size and health of Roux's business in 1907. Still, the Ebonitine works and its successors would continue to appear in all directories consulted for this page until 1938, suggesting a demand had been identified and was being supplied by Roux.

1908-1913

The 1908 edition of the same Paris directory again listed the Ebonitine business at the same address, but its range of products was now expanded to include Ebonite, Amiantine (an asbestos product) and manufactured rubber.

No significant changes are observed in the editions of 1909 to 1911, except that in the latter the main site had moved across the street from 144 to 147 bis, rue du Chemin-Vert, and Ebonitine was no longer advertised for use in telegraphy or telephones.

In a 1911 directory of the cinema and photography industries, Bernard Roux was listed under headings for batteries and asbestos, offering moulded insulating components; but it seems that this attempt to break into the sector did not bear fruit.

The general Paris directory for 1913 carried new entries from Roux under seven additional headings, and revised entries under existing ones:

Amiante (revised: 'Ebonitine, Amiantine, Ebonite and rubber[.] All asbestos items stocked')
Appareillage électrique (new: 'moulded insulators for [electrical] equipment. Melt-proof components […]')
Calorifuges (new: 'Heat- and fire-resistant Amiantine conduits and coatings. Sold in sheets or mouldings of all shapes')
Chauffage (appareils de) (new: 'insulating, fire-proof control wheels and levers for all heating appliances, radiators, etc., a speciality')
Chauffage à vapeur et à eau chaude (new: as Chauffage)
Cylindres pour phonographes (new: 'Moulds and wax blanks')
Disques pour phonographes (new: 'Specialized workshops for custom pressing of recordings. Supply and installation of all accessories')
Ebonite (revised: 'Range of Ebonite in sheets, bars and tubes in stock. Moulded and machined components. Ebonitine, Amiantine and rubber')
Isolants et isolateurs (revised: 'Specialist manufacture of insulating sheets and bars for all applications. Moulded components for transmission and equipment in Ebonitine, Amiantine and rubber')
Ivorine (revised: 'Manufacture of all Ivorine components using B. Roux process. Moulded components for electricity, telephony, photography and all applications. Gramophone records a speciality')
Radiateurs (new: 'insulating, fire-proof radiator caps a speciality. Supplier of major brands, French and foreign')
Traction électrique (revised: 'moulded plastic or fire-proof components for overhead or underground lines, equipment, power plants, etc.')

Société franco-anglaise de caoutchouc manufacturé

In December 1913, a new rubber manufacturing company was formed in Paris, the Société franco-anglaise de caoutchouc manufacturé. The founder was an engineer turned entrepreneur, Jean Nouzaret (1866-1929). Roux was not named as an officer of the company but clearly had an interest in it. Among the company's stated assets were Karavodine's patent, assigned to Roux, for the regeneration of vulcanized rubber and Ebonite, with its patent of addition by Roux, and Roux's own patent for the manufacture of rubber tubes and rolls or bars (boudins), also with patent of addition. Another asset, reflected in the company's name, was the benefit of agreements with a British company, the Millwall Rubber Co., Ltd., of Harpenden, which had been exploiting the Roux rubber patent (also granted in Britain) for some time, although the recent early death of its owner had cast doubt over the Millwall Rubber Co.'s future. As manufacturing premises, the new Société franco-anglaise was to take over a rubber works in Levallois-Perret, a north-eastern suburb of Paris. (This factory had recently burned down.) Presumably, Bernard Roux's interest in the new firm was mainly financial; his name continued to appear in trade directories only alongside the Ebonitine business.

1914-1919 and after

Roux's entries in the 1914 Paris directory showed no changes from those of 1913.

No information regarding Roux's activities during World War I has been uncovered in sources accessible online. Whether the Ebonitine workshops and Levallois factory were commandeered or re-purposed to serve the war effort is not known.

In August 1918, some months before the end of hostilities, Roux bought additional manufacturing premises in Paris, on the Avenue du Maine. The new site was presumably handy for Roux, being located only five minutes' walk from his flat on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and it remained in use by his business for the next two decades. It was the workshop of a well-established mechanic, Gaston Roquejoffre, who was kept on by Roux, and appears to have handled the precision engineering side of the business.

Meanwhile, Paris directories for 1918 and 1919 showed the main Ebonitine business in the rue du Chemin-Vert expanding into yet more new lines:

Boutons (fabricants et march[ands]. de) ('Roux process-moulded buttons – imitation horn and black corozo. Fancy items for tailors and seamstresses')
Eclairage électrique des voitures ('Moulded insulators for electrical equipment. Melt-proof components and sheets')
Jetons pour casinos, cafés, usines, jeux […] ('Moulded tokens in all colours')
Jumelles (fabr[icants]. de) ('Eyepieces and components in Ebonitine and Ebonite')
Magnétos ('Insulating components for magnetos, Ebonite distributors')
Radiotélégraphie ('Moulded insulators for electrical equipment. Melt-proof components and sheets')

Thereafter, Bernard Roux's range of advertised uses for Ebonitine, Ebonite and its other products remained more or less unchanged, until an significant development in the mid-1930s took a branch of his company in a new direction (see below).

The Société franco-anglaise de caoutchouc manufacturé, too, continued to be listed in the main Paris directory and other trade publications. Perhaps a sign of post-War social change, its specialities were now rubber-soled shoes for tennis and the beach, as well as a fashionable footwear fad, the talon tournant (a circular heel plate, deeply cut to leave an impression – an image or logo – in soft surfaces such as sand or soil).

Etablissements Bernard Roux

In October 1923, the Société agreed to sell its factory in Levallois to another company. After divesting itself of its main asset, the Société Franco-Anglaise then changed its name to Etablissements Bernard Roux, confirming Roux's continuing interest in the company, which was now restructured. Joining Roux on its board were Pierre Ibled, described as an industrialist, and Gaston Widmer, an engineer. The first of these names is significant: originating in the Pas-de-Calais, one branch of the Ibled family had become prominent in Dijon and was closely intertwined by friendship and marriage with that of Bernard Roux. Etablissements Bernard Roux remained in business until about 1952, and then, with a slight change of name, until 1961.

For most of the remainder of this page, the company's core business of plastics and insulators will be relegated to the background, so as to concentrate on its activities in audio recording, disc manufacture and electronics. As far as is known, the plastics and insulators side continued to flourish. No evidence has been found to indicate which was the more productive or profitable, although Roux ultimately exited from disc manufacturing first (see below).

Records and recordings

The original prompt for this page was a known if overlooked private recording by Bernard Roux of modern chamber music. Its considerable historical importance set me wondering who Roux was, why his firm made it, what else he did and why he is not better known today. It did not take long to find other Roux discs in public collections; several of these are also of historical and musical interest, yet no one, apparently, has written about them. In fact, the only people outside France who know of Roux today seem to be aficionados of early European jazz recordings, a few of which are preserved on Bernard Roux test pressings. The pressings themselves are rarely much help: those I was able to inspect in person or online usually carry little or no information on their labels about their recorded contents or intended use. But the main reason for Bernard Roux's current obscurity, I have concluded, is that his firm issued no recordings under his name. Private commissions, such as the recording which first piqued my interest in Roux, were probably a minor sideline of his audio business: the bulk of its production consisted of contract recordings and pressings for other firms, hardly reported in the press and largely invisible. Roux's clients were mostly small, local labels, often short-lived and usually leaving little documentary trace behind them. As a result, Bernard Roux has been overlooked by most historians – despite a strong tradition of discographical study of the French industry of the period. Yet Roux was involved in records and recording almost from the start of his career. Why he went in for this line of business is not hard to imagine. Rubber and allied materials had been used to make gramophone records since before 1900; to a young entrepreneur with expertise in plastics, this novel, growing market must have been very attractive.

1906-1920s

One of Roux's earliest patents, obtained in 1906, was for a new process of disc record manufacture; in 1907, he was granted another, for a disc-pressing mould. In that year's Didot-Bottin directory, 'Phonographes' was the only category with three entries from Roux, advertising Roux-process Ebonitine as a suitable material for sound-box diaphragms, and offering to press discs and supply metal stampers.

In a 1910 trade directory aimed at the theatrical and musical professions, a boxed display advertisement, placed between a piano dealer's and a zither-maker's, spelled out Roux's full range of gramophone products and services:

Ebonitine (Procédés B. Roux)
Bureaux: 147bis, Rue du Chemin-Vert :: Usines: 144, Rue du Chemin-Vert
Enregistrements à façon de Disques à saphir et à aiguilles en toutes dimensions
Seul presseur à façon de disques phonographiques et gramophoniques
Cires à enregistrer — Diaphragmes — Matières à disques — Pièces moulées pour applications électriques en tous Genres et toutes Couleurs — Pièces infusibles.

This is the first advertisement or listing located to date in which Bernard Roux offered not only pressing but also recording services, as well as disc-cutting diaphragms and wax blanks for those who wished to make recordings in their own studios. (Incidentally, the advertisement reveals that the Ebonitine business occupied both the original site at 144 rue du Chemin-Vert and the new premises at 147 bis.) These products and services suggest a fully-fledged record-producing operation, although much about it remains unknown. How large was it? What proportion of Roux's overall business did it account for? How many clients did it have? Where were the recordings made and by whom (almost certainly not by Roux in person)? And was Roux's really the sole custom recording and pressing facility in Paris? The latter claim seems justified, going by the 1909 to 1911 Didot-Bottin directories, which list no obvious competitors: one company offered 'blank discs for recording', presumably waxes, but no recording facility; another advertised the 'Only device permitting the recording of blank discs on any make of disc machine, with instant replay', alongside the 'planing' (rabotage) of discs, presumably to remove existing grooves. None of the entries for the larger, well-known companies – Columbia, Compagnie du Gramophone, Pathé – mention custom recording or pressing services. (Pathé did manufacture discs for labels such as Aspir, Dutreih, Idéal and Phono, but did not advertise this service in directories.)

The reason such services were needed is that small record labels did not own matrix processing or disc pressing plants, and so were obliged to contract out these industrial stages of record manufacture. How many French firms possessed such facilities has not been established – far fewer, certainly, than the plethora of labels marketed during this period. If the 1910 directory quoted above suggests Roux was already active in the contract processing and pressing business, or aiming to enter it, his firm's entry under 'Disques pour phonographes' in the 1922 Didot-Bottin directory shows this activity expanding even further:

Ebonitine
procédés B. Roux
Pressage de disques.
Enregistrements.
Création de répertoires.
Machines à enregistrer.
Cires, galvanos, diaphragmes.

Up until 1910, Roux had advertised disc recording and pressing services, materials and equipment; now, he was offering 'catalogue-building' (création de répertoires) – Artists & Repertoire ('A&R'), in modern parlance. (Note also the advertised 'recording machines'; these were probably destined for professional studios, not for home or personal use – but see below.) Presumably, this catalogue-building service was aimed at firms and retailers wishing to launch their own labels but lacking both the necessary editorial and commercial expertise, recording and/or pressing facilities.

Which labels, if any, took up Roux's offer? Unfortunately, Roux did not name clients in trade directory entries. It is sometimes possible to identify contract recordings and pressings from their physical features or characteristic markings, but most Roux pressings currently documented are not distinctive enough for that. It seems unlikely that documentary evidence for collaborations between Roux and long-defunct, small commercial labels will emerge, although not impossible (such evidence does survive from the electrical period and will be discussed below). For a fuller picture of Roux's contract production, test pressings have to be matched up with issued commercial discs, and extrapolations made from observed patterns.

Cylinders

In 1913 and 1914, entries for Ebonitine appeared in the Paris directories under Cylindres pour phonographes et graphophones – somewhat surprisingly, in hindsight, as by this time the format was all but obsolete. In 1913, two other businesses had entries in this category; in 1914, just one, while a few more companies appeared under Graphophones, the category for cylinder players. No evidence has yet been found that Ebonitine was actually used in the production of cylinder records. Perhaps the very fact that most leading producers had dropped the format prompted Roux to see if anything could be made from its last gasp. At least one other business apparently saw the same opportunity: in the 1918 Paris directory, cylinders had disappeared but players were listed for the last time, attracting a single, new entry from the Palais de la Nouveauté, a budget department-store chain. For lack of both evidence and, regrettably, expertise, this topic is not examined further here.

Electrical recording

After more than a decade in audio disc production and manufacturing, Roux would have been well aware of new trends and openings in the industry. In the early 1920s, developments in telephony, microphones and electronics (notably, valves) combined with the rise of broadcast radio and cinema to trigger an international race to replace acoustical recording with electrical techniques. The best known and best documented of these is the Westrex system, developed in the United States by Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric, who licensed it to leading national and multi-national companies. Other systems were developed and exploited with varying degrees of success and recognition – one, possibly the least well documented of all, by none other than Bernard Roux. A 1936 newspaper article described him (with questionable accuracy) as

the first who thought of using triode valve amplification for [sound] recording

Questions of priority aside, in March 1923 Roux had applied in Paris for a patent in a new recording process 'employing the electrical techniques used in telephony'; it also proposed using multiple microphones and a mixer, as well as a headphone feed permitting real-time monitoring. The patent was granted a little over a year later, by which time Roux had applied for Swiss and British patents in the same technology; both granted. Another patent soon followed, for an electrical method of duplicating sound recordings and transferring them between different media (see next section). These patents await investigation by historians of technology; in particular, the construction and properties of the transducer(s) used seem not to be fully described in these patents.

By early 1925, Bernard Roux's engineers had made their first successful electrical experiments. An academic article by a member of the team, published in early 1932, claimed these as France's first commercial electrical recordings. A newspaper article printed a few weeks later related that a number of electrical disc recordings, notably of the piano, had been made by the engineers Georges Laudet and Jean Ibled in Roux's laboratories in 1924-25, and later deposited with Hubert Pernot (1870-1946), head of the Musée de la parole. Laudet had been a sound engineer since the turn of the century, and is best remembered now for his work on film-sound synchronization for Léon Gaumont; Ibled (1890-1965) was a decorated War veteran and related to Roux by marriage. A test recording, clearly deriving from these experiments, is discussed below.

For whatever reason, whereas Karavodine's patented Ebonitine production process (ceded to Bernard Roux) was known as the 'Procédé(s) Roux', the Roux electrical recording technique is not known to have been given a name.

Duplication and transfer

In November 1924, Bernard Roux applied to patent a 'Technique for electrical duplication of phonographic and photographic sound recordings', granted a year later. A subsequent application in Switzerland was also granted; a third, in Great Britain, became void. As the patent descriptions state, Roux's proposed electrical method for duplicating or transferring recordings aimed to supersede the mechanical ones employed until then (notably, by Pathé, which continued to make master recordings on cylinders, even after the format had become obsolete, and to transfer them mechanically to disc masters). Roux claimed his system was capable of transferring any sound recording from one medium or format – cylinder, disc, even optical film – to another, without loss of quality; on the contrary, defects in the original could be corrected by electrical filtering and amplification. In the competitive market Roux was targeting, the facility to change size and cut might be a considerable advantage (as, too, would the ability to transfer recordings to and from film). No press reports mentioning this technology have been encountered to date. If Roux exploited it commercially, considerable detective work may be required to identify its products.

Studios

Two venues used by Bernard Roux to make sound recordings are currently documented. Almost certainly, there were others, but to date no evidence for them has been uncovered. In particular, no mention has yet been found of venues used by Roux before 1922, during the entire first decade and a half or so of his firm's possible recording activity.

The 1932 account of Roux's first electrical recordings, cited above, stated that they were made in the 'studios Bernard Roux' in the rue Rochechouart in Paris. The plural 'studios' suggests that more than one space was in use there, but in the earliest known published reference to the facility, a mid-1924 Paris newspaper advertisement, just one 'recording hall' was mentioned, and its exact address given:

On dem. jeune homme sérieux, 17 à 19 ans pr trav. manuel facile. Se présenter Salle d’Enregistrement, Bernard Roux, 24, rue Rochechouart, après-midi

(A very similar advertisement, published fifteen months later, gave the same address but did not mention the studio.) This address housed part of the head-quarters of the well-known instrument-maker Pleyel et Compagnie, which at various times occupied numbers 20, 22, 24 and 24 bis, rue Rochechouart, in Paris's 9th arrondissement. (Pleyel's main factory was in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis.) The best known of these addresses is no.22, that of the 'old' Salle Pleyel, the concert hall inaugurated in December 1839 and immortalized by the celebrated pianists who performed there, notably Chopin. To either side of this hall were workshops, offices, showrooms and salons, as well as a second, smaller hall. Situated at no.24, this became known as the 'Salle des quatuors', since it was used mainly though not exclusively for chamber concerts. Its other documented use was pedagogical; as a child, the future conductor and composer Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (1880-1965) was taken there to perform by his mother, a piano-teacher. Not long after, the charity L’Oeuvre de Mimi Pinson, founded in 1900 by the composer Gustave Charpentier, put on free classes in music and dance for unmarried working women in the hall at no.24; a magazine article by Charpentier about his venture was illustrated with some of the only photographs found to date of the smaller 'salle Pleyel'. After World War I, unlike the larger main hall, the smaller hall seems to have fallen out of use for commercial concerts. Instead, it was used for student concerts and private lessons by singers and other teachers, notably the pianist-composer Lucien Wurmser (1877-1967): initially based elsewhere, from 1916 until 1927 Wurmser's annual courses were held in a 'salle Pleyel', probably the smaller.

Based on the above evidence, my current hypothesis is that this hall, Pleyel's former 'Salle des quatuors', was used as a recording studio by Bernard Roux from at least 1922 until 1927. Recording equipment was perhaps installed and left in place in an adjoining room; this would surely not have been possible with the main hall, which was in regular public use and opened onto other public spaces, notably showrooms. The smaller hall would also have been easier to drape or otherwise treat for the purposes of recording. Finally, Roux's recording set-up might have been available for hire by teachers who shared the venue: in November 1928, a classified advertisement in a Paris newspaper offered for sale a

Machine à enregistrer électrique, permettant d’enregistrer soi-même, conviendrait pour professeur, s’adresser p[ou]r essai. Blanc, 24, rue Rochechouart.

The advertisement did not name Bernard Roux as the seller but the address given was that of Pleyel's smaller hall, so it seems reasonable to conjecture that the recording machine in question had been part of the Roux equipment there, while the mention of a professeur (i.e. teacher) suggests that its pedagogical use was a familiar notion.

Besides the early electrical experiments conducted by Bernard Roux recordists in the rue Rochechouart (mentioned above and described below), at least one other surviving recording is known to have been made there, acoustically, a little over two years earlier (see below). The presence of this still relatively new musical technology within the precincts of Pleyel was not alien to the firm's director Gustave Lyon (1857-1936), described admiringly by Inghelbrecht as an inveterate inventor who 'unflaggingly demanded of science that it serve art'. As early as 1889, an Edison phonograph was installed there, in its own, dedicated room, and demonstration recordings were made on it; a cylinder previously recorded in New York was reportedly also replayed on it. In late 1906, Lyon had been a founding board-member of the Société Générale d’Impressions Phonographiques, a short-lived record company dissolved not long after. In 1908 and 1909, its showroom was in the Maison Pleyel, at no.22, but it is not known to have made recordings there. Twenty years later, Lyon developed his own electrical record-player and planned to make his own recordings; Lyon himself demonstrated the machine in public in late 1929, but whether any 'Pleyel' or 'Lyon' discs were made is, again, unknown. Further unknowns: when Bernard Roux started using Pleyel's premises; the terms of their relationship (did Roux pay Pleyel rent or session fees?); whether the Maison Pleyel was the only location used by Roux during that period; and whether other firms also recorded there.

In 1927, Pleyel et Cie moved its head-quarters from the rue Rochechouart to a new, purpose-built complex on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in the 8th arrondissement. At its heart was a large concert hall, the Salle Pleyel, still in use today. Roux's association with Pleyel is not known to have been maintained after the move; recordings were made in the 'new' Salle Pleyel for one of Roux's clients (see below), but not by Roux, who was contracted only to press these discs, not record them. The equipment in the rue Rochechouart would not have been needed in the new venue, which probably explains the advertisement quoted above. The old Salles Pleyel seem to have closed definitively in 1928; after that year, they disappear from Paris directories, although the buildings around them remained in use by various tenants.

Still, Roux's association with Pleyel may have borne other fruit, in the form of a new direction of research and development for his own company. Within the old Maison Pleyel was an office specialising in architectural acoustics, led by Gustave Lyon himself. No evidence of personal exchanges between Lyon and Roux has been uncovered, but it is striking that Roux's firm later developed technology for shaping studio acoustics electronically (discussed below), in association with the composer and organist Eric Sarnette. This was demonstrated publicly in early May 1936, in a 'studio-laboratoire Bernard Roux' which is currently known only from a two press reports of that demonstration. It was located in the rue Jenner, in Paris's 13th arrondissement. The exact address is not known: it was certainly not numbers 6 to 8, later renowned as the birthplace of many famous recordings; this already belonged to the Société phonographique française Polydor (and, later, to Philips). It is more likely to have been number 25 bis, a disused factory later used as a film studio by the director Jean-Pierre Melville and almost completely destroyed by fire in 1967. Two trade directories of the mid- and late 1930s list a 'recording studio' (studio d'enregistrement) among facilities offered by Etablissements Bernard Roux, without stating its location; Roux's engineers surely did not use the space in the rue Jenner solely for research and development, so this may have been the facility referred to in the directories.

It remains to be determined whether Roux also used other spaces for recording sessions.

Pressing plant(s)

Bernard Roux had an interest in disc-pressing even before the Ebonitine works came into being, and maintained it for much of his working life: one of his earliest patents, applied for in late 1905 and granted in 1907, was for a disc-pressing mould, while one of the last applied for by his firm, in May 1945, and granted in 1946, was for a method of pressing claimed to offer great savings of energy and metal, then scarce.

From the start of Roux's manufacturing career, Paris directories gave full addresses for his business, but they rarely stated explicitly what was being done at each location. As noted above, the 1907 Didot-Bottin, the first with detailed entries for the Ebonitine works, gave the main address and site of its workshops (plural) as 144 rue du Chemin-Vert, with a workshop (singular) and 'industrial testing laboratory' at 2 & 4 rue Esquirol, while all entries under individual product categories gave only the main address.

This remained true until 1910, when another directory clarified, 'Usines: 144, Rue du Chemin-Vert'. Taken at face value, this means that within the ordinary-looking Parisian apartment building at no.144, alongside other manufacturing plant, was a disc-pressing facility – of what capacity, and how productive, is not known. This directory also stated, 'Bureaux: 147bis, Rue du Chemin-Vert', a new location for the Ebonitine business. In the following year's Didot-Bottin it was given as the main address, with no mention of no.144, while a workshop and lab remained at 2 & 4 rue Esquirol; correspondingly, product entries now listed only 147 bis, rue du Chemin-Vert. From now on, offices and disc presses were apparently in one place again, where they remained until 1919 (the 1920 directory is not accessible).

From 1921, directories listed yet another new main address for Ebonitine, 142 rue du Chemin-Vert, with a workshop and lab still at 2 & 4 rue Esquirol. If all the Ebonitine plant and presses really had been moved back across the street from 147 bis, at least it was not far. But this may have been a simplification: in the 1926 Didot-Bottin, the main entry for Ebonitine again listed it first at no.142 and secondly at rue Esquirol, but now the entry listing all businesses at 142, rue du Chemin-Vert, stated:

« Ebonitine » (Bernard Roux, ingénieur E.P.C.), pièces isolantes moulées; ateliers au 144, comptabilité au 147 bis.

If the main office was at no.142, the workshops at no.144 and accounts at no.147 bis, perhaps the plant and presses had never moved from no.144, and it had not been felt necessary to mention this in listings aimed at potential clients. (Nor had directories since 1924 reflected the fact that the business was officially named Etablissements Bernard Roux.) Whatever the case, this set-up remained in place until at least 1929, possibly until later, although subsequent directories are not as detailed or consistent. In May 1933, a tragic accident befell two children who had climbed onto the roof of the works at 144, rue du Chemin-Vert and fell to their deaths; newspaper reports described it as a 'gramophone record factory' and noted that 'the Roux firm has long been manufacturing raw material for gramophone records'. These sad reports confirm that no.144 had been and was still an industrial production site, possibly of both 'biscuit' and pressed discs.

Around this time, though, either the Bernard Roux presses were on the move, or the firm was adding a second pressing facility. In April, September and October 1932, and July 1933, it applied for permits to carry out building work at 12, place Pinel, a small, oval circus at the southern end of rue Esquirol. Nothing seems to remain of the buildings then standing, but no.12 appears to have abutted the Bernard Roux workshop and laboratory at nos.2 and 4, rue Esquirol. The new constructions on place Pinel were more workshops (ateliers), a small electrical sub-station (cabine électrique) and large shed (hangar). By June 1932, Roux was inviting record-press operators to apply to no.4, rue Esquirol, who would have been needed for the new facility at place Pinel, presumably not yet ready to open its gates. That pressing did take place there is confirmed by notices of an auction at 12, place Pinel seven years later, when Bernard Roux sold off large quantities of heavy industrial machinery, including at least fifteen record presses. Otherwise, this location was almost never mentioned in business reports and directories, surely because it was treated as part of the complex sited at 4, rue Esquirol, listed in two trade directories of the mid- and late 1930s as the address of one of Bernard Roux's three factories (the others were at 144, rue du Chemin-Vert, still, and 43, avenue du Maine, formerly Gaston Roquejoffre's wokshop). Another advertisement soliciting applications from record-press operators (specifying that they should be female and French nationals), in December 1934, again gave the address as 4, rue Esquirol.

(Another activity carried out by Roux at the firm's rue Esquirol complex was the production of moulded Bakelite components; as far as can be ascertained from classified advertisements recruiting experienced mould-workers, this went on roughly from mid-1929 to 1934 or later.)

Disc-manufacturing was heavy, dirty industry; nor was it the only potentially harmful activity at these sites. As early as July 1933, a local councillor passed on to Paris's Prefect of Police complaints he had received about emissions from the factories in place Pinel and rue Esquirol, 'highly noxious' to local residents and a nearby maternity ward, and about the lack of remedial action by the cuplrits. He was assured that up-to-date boilers and smoke abators were being installed, existing chimneys raised and a new one built. No firms were named but the addresses given leave no doubt: as well as those of Bernard Roux's works, Polydor's address on the rue Jenner was mentioned, and a fizzy drink factory on a nearby boulevard.

Test pressings

Below is a summary list of all Bernard Roux test pressings located for this page – a little over forty sides, to date. The recordings themselves will be discussed in later sections and, where possible, documented more fully.

The disc which prompted this page is one of six Roux tests held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (for full catalogue entries, follow links below):

• 'Bernard Roux – Octuor Finale', no matrices given, BnF shelf mark SD 78 30-12984
• 'Chant Hébreu' / 'Chant Hébreu', 4120 / 4121, BnF shelf mark AP-2172
• 'Premier disque à aiguille enregistré électriquement le 28 janvier 1925' / 'Orchestre enregistré électriquement le 28 juillet 1926', essai spécial no.57 / 3698, BnF shelf mark AP-2173
• 'Ecoles internationales Phonogramme de français N°2' / 'Ecoles internationales Phonogramme de français N°3', 3670 / 3671, BnF shelf mark AP-2174
• 'Guitare hawaïenne' / 'Chœur v.f.[?] av. Grand Orgue', E 584 / 3586, BnF shelf mark AP-2175
• 'Etablissements Bernard Roux 8510', 8510 / [?], BnF shelf mark SD 78 25-19949

Only two Bernard Roux test pressings have been found in national and university libraries elsewhere (catalogue entries via links):

• [no titles], 1106 / PK 200, British Library, London, shelf mark 9TS0002803
• 'Don Goyo / Bernstein. El matrero / Soler.', 4318 / 4319, University of California, Santa Barbara Library, shelf mark Bernard Roux 4318 / 4319

In March 2023, two Roux tests were sold online, described by the seller as follows:

Etablissements Bernard Roux 7330/7331 (10”) Hot Melodic Band (Julien Porret) Great Fun Test Pressing 78RPM Bernard Roux

Etablissements Bernard Roux 7334/7335 (10”) Hot Melodic Band (Julien Porret) Pupazzi Test Pressing 78RPM Bernard Roux

In April 2016 and April 2023, I bought three Bernard Roux test pressings from Phonopassion, of Horben, Germany, who described them as follows (labels from the first and third are reproduced below):

anonymous (cello solo ) Prelude en Ut mineur pt.1/2 (Bach) / published sides ? ? ak[ustisch] ? Bernard Roux test

anonymous (sop.) +piano: Se tu m'ami (Pergolesi) mx.4811 AB/ Lasciate me morire (Monteverdi) mx.4810 AB Paris ca.March 1929 released sides ? Azurephone is a very rare label. Usually less than 100 copies had been pressed once a record was released. Handwritten white label test Bernard Roux (Azurephone) test

(sop.)/(contr.) el. Bernard Roux (Azurephone) test unidentified (mx.9576/ 9577) Paris ca.1930

Revisiting past Phonopassion sales yielded two more Bernard Roux test pressings:

anonymous 8 2/3” el. Bernard Roux test (unidentified pianist) Finale: Presto agitato “Mondscheinsonate” (Beethoven) mx.6256 MB/ Fantaisie impromptu (Chopin) mx.6257 MB Paris ca.1930 Released recordings?

anonymous 8 2/3” el. Bernard Roux test (unidentified pianist) Moment musical (Schubert) mx.6343 MB/ Perpetuum mobile “Sonata in C” (Weber) mx.6342 MB Paris ca.1930 Released recordings?

Phonopassion's proprietor, Andreas Schmauder, kindly sent details of five other Roux tests known to him:

anonym (Orchester), Danse des souliers, mtx 11677 / ? mtx 11678, Bernard Roux test

Berson, Roger (European Ramblers) + Jean Farnèse (Gesang), Un deux... toute la compagnie, mtx M 142 A (Foxtrot with vocal) / Nana, mtx M 139 A (Rumba with vocal), Paris 1932, Bernard Roux test

Hamilton, Jack & his Entertainers, That’s my weakness now (Foxtrot with vocal), mtx 4748 AB / Virginia (Foxtrot with vocal), mtx 4749 AB (released on Azurephone in a different coupling), Paris 1929, Bernard Roux test

Sterman, Paul (Orchester), Mai-Thou (Foxtrot), mtx AB 10966 / Débinons-nous (One Step), mtx AB 10967, Bernard Roux test

Briggs, Arthur & his Boys + vocal duet, Glad rag doll (Foxtrot with vocal), mtx 4806 AB / Rudy Bayfield Evans (Refraingesang), Only for you, mtx 4807 AB (Waltz with vocal), Paris 1929 (released on Azurephone), Bernard Roux test

Further sides are documented in various discographies but no copies have been located:

The Red Beans
Robert de Kers tr. Francis “Sus” van Camp tbn. David Bee al-bs. René van Dijck pf. Charlie “Chas” Dolne ch-vl. Leopold Serluppens bt. Rudy Bayfìeld Evans v.

Parigi, ca. agosto 1928

35 AB Wonder Why (You Made Me Cry) – RBE v Bernard Roux test […]
36 AB Do Let Me Try [ditto] Bernard Roux test

4849 JPRM Sunny Boy (Sonny Boy) – RBE v Bernard Roux test

Marcel Dumont, de l’Empire, accomp. d’orchestre
janvier 1931?
6120 AB Publicité pour le [vin] blanc des Magasins du Louvre
6121 AB [ditto]
Disque publié par Les Editions [sic] Bernard Roux, 142 rue du Chemin-Vert, Paris. Echantillon invendable. Ce disque était réservé aux salles de cinéma puisqu’on entend, à la fin de l’annonce: “Ne partez pas sans voir notre prochain film”