For a company whose name is synonymous with wimpy music, Muzak had a surprisingly tough founder: an Army general. Major General George O. Squier served as the Army’s Chief Signal Officer during World War I, and in the early 1920s he perfected a method for transmitting music across electrical wires.

Of course, Major General George Owen Squier, who invented the Muzak concept through his Cleveland-based Wired Radio Inc. back in 1934, had an inkling there was a market to be exploited. Gucci Timepieces & Jewelry recently teamed up with The Recording Academy for a partnership that will entail the GRAMMY Museum analyzing and preserving an archive of more than 20,000 unearthed original Muzak recordings, revealing the company's — and the industry's — impressive, historic legacy.