Cros, Charles

(1842-1888)

   poet and inventor

   Charles Cros, who independently invented sound recording, was born in Fabrezan, Aude. Self-taught, he became interested in oriental languages (Sanskrit and Hebrew), then in mechanical sciences and physics, and carried on his own scientific studies while pursuing a literary career. Cros discovered, independently of louis ducos du hauron, the trichromium process of color photography (1869), as well as an apparatus that he called a paleophone, which preceded Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph (the Académie Charles Cros annually honors his memory with an award for that year's best recordings). Cros also frequented the bohemian literary world (with paul verlaine, villiers de l'isle-adam, and others), and composed a lyric work that for a long time remained unappreciated. Behind the mask of a whimsical writer, expert in humourous monologues (Le Hareng saur; Le Bilboquet; L'Obsession), he was also a poet of the absurd and of solitude, as in Le Coffret de santal (1873), much praised by Verlaine, and of a long poem, Le Fleuve (1874). Le Collier de griffes was published by his son in 1908.