Tuesday, April 24, 2007
PIPELESS ORGAN DAY
It was on this date in Chicago, IL that Laurens Hammond announced news that would be favored by many churches across the United States. The news was the development of the pipeless organ -- and a granting of a U.S. patent for same. The year was 1934.
Hammond, a decades-old name in keyboard organs in churches, theaters, auditoriums and homes, is the same Hammond who fostered many of the developments that would make electronic keyboards so popular in modern music. The Hammond B-3 and B-5 organs, for example, became mainstays for many recording artists, while inventions in Hammond organ loud speaker development (the Hammond Leslie Tremelo speaker) produced still other important milestones that allowed small organs to emulate the big concert theater console organs.
Later, solid-state circuitry and computers allowed keyboards the flexibility to sound like other instruments, permitting the organist to play many instruments from the organ’s multiple keyboards.
And you thought there was an entire orchestra hiding in the closet ...
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