Gough devised and constructed a wooden housing for a loudspeaker unit which importantly also acted as an acoustic chamber, rather in the way that the body of a violin serves as a sound box for the strings.
Challenging the dominant acoustic theories of his day and opposed by some major loudspeaker manufacturers,[1] Gough decided to publish and sell his own plans for the construction of the enclosure, which proved very popular in this do-it-yourself era and many thousands of copies were purchased by hi-fi enthusiasts worldwide.
In a front-page article for The Observer on 27 November, Peter Schirmer declared that a Gough enclosure, fitted with a single 12-inch loudspeaker unit, "could fill St Pauls Cathedral with almost perfect high fidelity sound."
Powered by a single 15-watt valve (tube) amplifier, and fitted with two eight-inch loudspeaker units, the Jabez Gough Enclosures managed to fill the opera house with sound.
"[6] Measuring almost six feet square, the Jabez Gough Enclosure inevitably lost popularity as portability and miniaturisation of audio systems took hold in the eighties and nineties.