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Laurens Hammond (January 11, 1895 – July 1, 1973) was an American engineer and inventor. His inventions include the Hammond organ, the Hammond clock, and the world's first polyphonic musical synthesizer, the Novachord.
In 1922, Hammond invented the Teleview system of shutter glasses in association with 3-D films. One feature was made for the system, The Man from M.A.R.S.. He premiered this show at the Selwyn Theatre in New York in December 1922 to critical acclaim, but the cost of installing the expensive machinery in the theater was prohibitive, and the process was never used again. A 2-D version of the film, renamed Radio-Mania, continued to screen.
Hammond's work on the synchronous motor led him in 1928 to set up the Hammond Clock Company, with six workers, above a grocery store in Chicago. Demand was high and the business soon grew into a large factory. He was responsible for a number of other inventions, such as an electric bridge table.
In 1933, Hammond bought a used piano, and discarded everything apart from the keyboard action. Using the keyboard as a controller, he experimented with different sound-generating methods, finally settling on one, the tonewheel generator. The company's assistant treasurer, W. L. Lahey, was the organist at the nearby St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, and Hammond consulted him concerning the quality of the new instrument's sound. Thanks to Hammond's prior manufacturing and engineering experience, the tonewheel generator was extremely well-engineered by the time the "Hammond Organ" finally went into production in 1935. Tonewheel organs are still in regular use in the twenty-first century, which is a testament to the quality of the design and execution of the product.
Hammond filed his patent application on January 19, 1934. At that time, unemployment was a major problem due to the Great Depression, and with this in mind, the Patent Office rushed to grant his application, with the hope of creating jobs in the area.
Hammond was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Price Wetherill Medal in 1940 for the invention of the Hammond electric organ.
In 2017 the Laurens Hammond Museum was founded in Kielce, Poland as a division of the Museum of Toys and Play.
(2025). 9780313334221, Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313334221 A mechanism below the $25 table's surface shuffled the cards and dealt them to each of the four players."An electric bridge table that shuffles and deals Hammond." Photoplay, December 1932, 15.
Later life and death
Hammond left his position as president of his company in 1955, and retired from the company in 1960, at the age of sixty-five. During his life he held 91 patents. He was married to Roxana Scoville, and had one daughter. He died in Cornwall, Connecticut on July 1, 1973, aged 78.
Notes
Further reading
The most comprehensive source on Laurens Hammond's life and inventions is the book by Stuyvesant Barry, Hammond as in Organ: The Laurens Hammond Story. This book was never published, but is available on the web at The Hammond Organ Story.
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