Inventor of the trumpet automaton, several musical automata, and the harmonichord. Clockmaker, instrument maker and musician in Dresden. Founder of the cabinet of acoustics in Dresden.

Son of a musician and a voice teacher, Pierre Schaeffer received a Catholic education, practiced theater as a boy scout, and learned to play the cello at the conservatory in Nancy. He chose to pursue engineering, gaining admission to the Polytechnique in 1929, where he continued his work in theater, followed by studies at the Supélec (top-ranked graduate school for electrical engineering).