Laurens Hammond was an American engineer and inventor. He founded the Hammond Company, and is known for inventing the electronic keyboard instrument, the Hammond organ, the Hammond clock, the world's first 3D glasses, and the polyphonic musical synthesizer, the Novachord.
Background
Laurens Hammond was born on January 11, 1895 in Evanston, Illinois, United States. He was the fourth child of William Andrew Hammond, a banker, and Idea Louise Strong, an amateur artist. After his father died in 1898, his mother moved the family to Europe in order to resume her art studies. The family, including three sisters, one the writer Eunice Tietjens, lived in Paris, but soon left for Geneva, and later Dresden, because of the turmoil over the Dreyfus affair. The family returned to Evanston in 1909.
Education
Fascinated by science, Hammond patented his first invention, an automobile transmission, while barely a teenager. In 1909, he sold his idea for an inexpensive yet sensitive barometer. Hammond attended Evanston Township High School and then Cornell University from 1912 to 1916, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Laurens Hammond enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Sixteenth Engineering Regiment of the American Expeditionary Force, when the United States entered World War I in 1917. After serving in France, he was discharged as a captain in May 1919. For two years, he served as the chief engineer of the Gray Motor Company, a manufacturer of marine engines. During this time, he designed a diesel car engine, but could not sell the idea. In 1920, he sold his design for a "tickless" clock and with the money set up a studio in New York City to work full time as an inventor.
Hammond developed a synchronous motor that was in phase with the sixty-cycle alternating current that was then becoming standard in the United States. This motor was the basis for many of his later inventions. Its first use, in 1922, was the Teleview, a device for creating three-dimensional movies using a special, dual-lens camera and an eyepiece similar to a stereoscope. The Teleview, however, never gained popularity. Hammond later modified the 3-D device for use in the theater, selling the effect to the Ziegfeld Follies.
Using the royalties from Ziegfeld, Hammond traveled to Europe. Returning to the United States in 1925 after his royalties ran out, Hammond turned down a job with Western Union in favor of working independently. After merging his synchronous motor with the "tickless" clock, he formed the Hammond Clock Co. in 1928 with half a dozen workers in a room over a Chicago grocery store. The business went well until the onset of the Great Depression. Then the soured economic climate and increased competition caused the company to lose money in the period 1931-1935. In 1932, he used the clock motor to produce an electric bridge table that dealt cards for players, an example of Hammond's belief that toys for adults were the most promising area for invention. The table sold moderately well, but not enough to extricate the company from its financial straits.
While working on an experimental phonograph turntable, Hammond heard the motor emit a flute-like tone. This prompted him to investigate the possibilities of creating music with electricity. Using the keyboard from a secondhand piano, he started work on what would become the Hammond Organ. Synthesizing sound through electricity was not a novel idea: the massive Cahill Telharmonium, intended to pipe music over telephone lines, had preceded Hammond's work. Hammond believed, however, in addressing a problem without being preoccupied with previous efforts.
Hammond's acumen in manufacturing and marketing also helped him to develop a product that could be sold even in the Depression. He demonstrated the Hammond Organ, which used ninety-one silver-dollar-sized motors, in the basement of the United States Patent Office on January 1, 1934. The patent was granted April 24, 1934, and in Spring 1935 the organ was exhibited at the Industrial Arts Exposition in New York City. At a special preview, George Gershwin bought the first one. Other early buyers included Rudy Vallée and Henry Ford.
In the first eight months, 807 organs were sold. The organ lifted what was now Hammond Instrument Co. out of the red. Sales were helped by an aggressive advertising campaign that claimed the organ produced all the necessary tone colors needed "for the rendition, without sacrifice, of the great works of the classical organ literature." The organ, the advertisements claimed, was the equivalent of a $10,000 pipe organ.
Besides stimulating sales, the advertisements also drew the ire of pipe organ makers. They told the Federal Trade Commission the advertisements were misleading. Hearings convened in Chicago in March 1937 and concluded in Washington, D.C., in April 1938. The testimony included a blind test in the University of Chicago chapel, in which nine renowned musicians, mostly organists, were asked to distinguish between the chapel's pipe organ and a Hammond organ. The panel guessed wrong a third of the time. Hammond testified for three and a half days, maintaining that the Hammond Organ was better than those used by Bach and more advanced than contemporary pipe organs because it was flexible enough to play popular as well as classical music.
During a demonstration at the hearings, an organ reproduced the sound of a locomotive, a calliope, and an earthquake. These effects were possible because, instead of traditional organ stops, the organ was equipped with drawbars that let the player mix harmonics, with the resultant possibility of creating 253,000 different tonal combinations. In July 1938 the FTC ordered the company to cease making the contested claims. Hammond responded that the publicity from the trial more than made up for the trial's cost.
By 1937, Hammond had given up management of the company's daily operations to concentrate on research. Hammond took another step toward synthesized sound in 1939 with the Novachord, which used vacuum tubes rather than motors. The instrument was shown at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City and Eleanor Roosevelt gave one to President Roosevelt for his birthday, but the instrument failed to catch on. The Solovox, an electric organ attachment for a standard piano, which was introduced in 1940, also failed in the market.
After World War II, during which Hammond worked on technology for guided missiles, glide bombs, and aerial cameras, he directed his concentration back to the home organ market. In 1949, his company introduced a spinet organ and in 1950, the first chord organ, which allowed the novice to play a full chord by pressing only one key. These helped ensure a profit for the Hammond company into the 1960's.
In 1955 Hammond stepped down as Hammond president, though he remained chairman of the board. After his retirement, Hammond withdrew from the company and the music industry. He divided his time between homes in France; Antigua; Montevideo, Uruguay; New York City; and Cornwall, Connecticut, where he died.
Laurens Hammond went down in history as a distinguished inventor and manufacturer. He successfully claimed his first patent for the barometer when he was just 17 years old, and as the years progressed, created a whole array of other inventions, from clocks and military ordnance, to cinema’s first 3D glasses - and, of course, the famous Hammond Organ.
Hammond was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Price Wetherill Medal in 1940 for the invention of the Hammond electric organ.
Teleview system for projecting stereoscopic motion pictures
1922
Hammond organ
1934
Novachord
1939
Membership
Hammond was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity.
Personality
A private person, he divulged little of his personal life other than interests in chess, poker, and yachting. His pride in his work is illustrated by an incident reported in the Cornell Alumni Bulletin. While at a college reunion, he heard someone playing a Hammond organ. He asked the individual how often he played the instrument. The man allowed he had been playing it for only the third time. "I thought so," commented Hammond. "I am Larry Hammond. I manufacture them. They can be played beautifully."
Interests
chess, poker, yachting
Connections
Hammond married Mildred Anton-Smith on September 1, 1924, in Washington, D. C. They had two daughters.
On February 19, 1954 Hammond's first wife committed suicide by jumping from the window of their third floor apartment in Chicago shortly after she and Hammond had returned from a six-week European vacation. Hammond said she had been despondent over her health.
On October 25, 1955, Hammond married Roxana Scoville in West Cornwall, Connecticut.
American Silent Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Feature Films, 1913-1929
During the Silent Era, when most films dealt with dramatic or comedic takes on the "boy meets girl, boy loses girl" theme, other motion pictures dared to tackle such topics as rejuvenation, revivication, mesmerism, the supernatural and the grotesque. A Daughter of the Gods (1916), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Magician (1926) and Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) were among the unusual and startling films containing story elements that went far beyond the realm of "highly unlikely." Using surviving documentation and their combined expertise, the authors catalog and discuss these departures from the norm in this encyclopedic guide to American horror, science fiction and fantasy in the years from 1913 through 1929.
