Hammond, Laurens
Hammond, Laurens
Hammond, Laurens, American manufacturer of keyboard instruments; b. Evanston, Ill., Jan. 11, 1895; d. Cornwall, Conn., July 1, 1973. He studied engineering at Cornell Univ., then went to Detroit to work on the synchronization of electrical motor impulses, a principle he later applied to the Hammond Organ (1933), an electronic keyboard instrument, resembling a spinet piano, which suggests the sound of the pipe organ. Still later, he developed a newfangled electrical device which he called the Novachord that was designed to simulate the sound of any known or hypothetical musical instrument; he gave the first demonstration of the Novachord in the Commerce Dept. auditorium in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 2, 1939. In 1940 he introduced the Solovox, an attachment to the piano keyboard that enables an amateur player to project the melody in organlike tones. A further invention was the “chord organ,” which he introduced in 1950, and which is capable of supplying basic harmonies when a specialbutton is pressed by the performer.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire