John Matthias Augustus Stroh (1828-1914) was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He studied watchmaking in his early years and excelled in his skills. After visiting the London Exhibition in 1851, he moved to England and became a citizen. He collaborated with scientist Charles Wheatstone for a long time and invented multiple telegraph and acoustic instruments, including the widely used Wheatstone automatic telegraph system, which won the gold medal at the 1878 Paris Exhibition. Starting from 1860, a factory was established in London to manufacture instruments. After selling the factory to the British Post Office in 1880, he retired and focused on original research.

Stroh made outstanding contributions in the field of acoustics, improving the phonograph and producing an all aluminum version with uniform rotation speed and extremely low noise; Designed an instrument for analyzing musical sounds and vowels, and demonstrated it at the Royal Society in 1879. Stroh violin (also known as Stroviol or horn violin) is his most acclaimed work, applied for a British patent (GB9418) in 1899 and approved in 1900. This is a mechanical amplification violin that replaces traditional wooden resonance boxes with metal diaphragms and aluminum horns to amplify sound. Stroh is humble, low-key, and reclusive. In 1875, he was elected as a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) and served as a council member. He was skilled in photography and collecting watches. He passed away in London in 1914 at the age of 87.