From simon@alphabeck.co.uk Fri Jan 22 03:01:10 2010
Subject:The Hammond "Trial" of 1937 (was: Re: KeyB, DSPs, and Computers)

That's a story in itself. Here is an account of it which I found on the Web:

==========

The term "routine" might have beer applied to the Hammond business in 1937
until, one day, a "time bomb' communication was received. It was so-called
stipulation from the Federal Trade Commission asserting that certain
statements in Hammond advertising were not completely accurate. The
complaint, in general, said that the Hammond instrument was not an "organ"
and that it could not produce an "infinite number" of tonal variations.
Laurens Hammond, more the self-effacing and quiet inventor than a public
pugilist, nevertheless decided to fight. He was a participant in one of the
most amazing events in the history of music. The FTC had decided to have an
impartial panel listen to a $75,000 pipe organ and a $2,600 Hammond
installation to determine whether the panelists could tell the difference.
Players of both instruments were hidden from view by screens and the Hammond
speaker cabinets were concealed among the organ pipes at the University of
Chicago Chapel. A panel of 15 students and 15 professional musicians was
asked to record whether it was the pipe organ or the Hammond electric organ
that was being played in a number of test pieces. That these jurors were
wrong in their answers ten times out of 30 was indication enough that the
Hammond had carved itself a permanent niche in the musical instrument field.
A year later the FTC decided that the company could call its instrument an
organ but must desist from claiming an infinite number of tones - for, after
all, it could produce only 253,000,000 tones!

==========

Simon

> The Hammond Organ itself had image problems when it first debuted, and
> there was actually an attempt to prevent Laurens Hammond from calling it
> an "organ," since a "real" organ had air blowing across pipes. Hammond
> successfully fought this attempt, and was granted the right to continue to
> call it the Hammond Organ, but it was still very different from any organ
> produced before 1935, and many that were produced afterwards.

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