“Music's Most Glorious Voice”: The Hammond Organ

Known as "Music's Most Glorious Voice," the Hammond organ was the most widely heard musical instrument on network radio, in restaurants, roller rinks, auditoriums, and homes for decades. The instrument had its detractors as well as ardent supporters. Inventor Laurens Hammond was trying to make an inexpensive substitute for the pipe organ; he came up with the first synthesizer. Now, almost 60 years and 300,000 instruments later, the Hammond organ company is owned by Suzuki and no longer makes the tonewheel organs which made it famous. Nevertheless, the venerable Hammond lives on. Many are still in daily use, and old models are eagerly sought out by rock musicians who love their special sound (Doerschuk 36). Those not lucky enough to own an authentic Hammond must content themselves with a modern keyboard that samples the old tonewheel organ sound, and the results are not the same. The Hammond electric organ was invented in the early 1930s by Laurens Hammond of Evanston, Illinois. Hammond began work on the instrument in 1931, had a working prototype by 1934, and demonstrated the device to the U.S. Patent Office in that year. It received a patent number of 1956350 (Pipeless 29). In 1935, Hammond displayed the first production model (the A series) at the Industrial Arts Exhibit in Rockefeller Center in New York City (Bing 142). According to popular accounts (no doubt based on promotional materials from the company itself), the prototype was played by no less than Pietro Yon, then organist at St. Patrick's Cathedral, who gave it enthusiastic praise (Bing 142). George Gershwin, then at the peak of his fame as a composer of Broadway musicals and jazz-inspired concert works, played it and ordered one on the spot. Within a few weeks of the exhibit, Henry Ford and Rudy Vallee had ordered instruments. Others were soon installed at Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, the MGM studios, and the Naval Academy at Annapolis. One was even ordered for the R.M.S. Aquitania (Pipeless 39). Even though he didn't buy one, Leopold Stokowski, the eccentric but brilliant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, said that with only four Hammond organs, he could recreate the sound of an entire symphony orchestra (Electricity 32). Laurens Hammond was born on January 11, 1894, in Evanston, Illinois, to wealthy parents. He was one of four children and when his father died suddenly, Hammond's mother took the family to Europe where they eventually settled in Geneva. Hammond received a grammar school education there and then returned to Evanston for high school. He attended Cornell University where he received a degree in Electrical Engineering. Hammond then served in France with the 16th Engineering Corps. during WWI. (North 282). Following the war, Hammond worked briefly for the Grey Automobile Company of Detroit where he experimented with diesel engines before returning to Chicago to begin a career as an independent inventor. Between 1920 and 1930, Hammond came up with a number of interesting ideas. One of these, a "Teleview," was an early experiment in 3-D motion pictures using a motor-driven device that obscured first one eye and then the other so that the viewer would see alternating frames of the film. The frames showed first the left and then the right perspective on the scene. Hammond shot a demonstration film called Hello Mars which received a favorable screening in New York City. The Teleview, however, was not developed further (North 282). Instead, Hammond turned his attention to another 3-D device called a Shadowgraph which was used for a season by the Ziegfield Follies. The Shadowgraph used spotlights to cast red and green shadows of actors onto a screen. Audience members were issued lorgnettes with red and green colored lenses. The effect was that of moving 3-D shadows which projected out toward the audience (North 282). This is very similar to the anaglyph (red/green filter) process used by the motion picture industry in the 1950s to produce 3-D movies. …