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The outbreak of World War I both stimulated and disrupted the development of the gramophone. The Gramophone Company at Hayes in England was partly given over to war production while demand grew for portable gramophones at the frontline. Songs like 'It's A Long Way to Tipperary' and 'Till The Boys Come Home' proved popular at the front, and have come to epitomise those years for successive generations.
The new technology was used to capture the sounds of the War. The Gramophone Company recorded the roar of the big guns on the frontline at Lille. Following the Armistice, the Company recorded the ceremony surrounding the burial of the 'The Unknown Warrior' at Westminster Abbey. It was the first ever sound recording of a major public event.
Music 100 traces the events of the War years through pictures of the popular recording artists of the period. They include the Scots singer/comedian Sir Harry Lauder, whose son John was killed at the Somme in December 1916. Other pictures show troops listening to a gramophone in the Gallipoli trenches. The exhibition includes an original Decca 'Trench Model' gramophone, along with popular recordings of the day such as 'If You Were the Only Girl in the World'.
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