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Laurens Hammond: The Non-Musical Genius Who Changed Popular Music · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody in Orlando.
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• 0:46
  Speaker 3: to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Cherry's
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: here too, and this is stuff you should know. Part
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: of our ongoing musical saga frequently overlooked, but when we
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: do him, can we hit him out of the Park.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Remember remember the one where we talked about pitch and
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: we got every single thing we could have possibly gotten
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: wrong wrong.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I file this more sort of in the same category
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: as the great episodes we did on Les Paul and
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Leo Fender.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Music, Yeah, but you know why you got to bring
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: up our worst music one?
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: What else have we're done some other musical stuff, haven't
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: we've done like actual genres punk and hip hop and.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah disco, Yes, great one, you love that one.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: We have a robust musical suite going, and this adds
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: to it. I think this is a good idea in
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: your part, because we're talking about a guy who I
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: always thought his first name was John, and I couldn't
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: figure out why, and then I realized that Jurassic Park,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Jurassic Park, his name was John Hammond. It's funny, for sure.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: So its name actually isn't John, It's Lawrence. But I
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: think you pronounce it like Lawrence, but it's spelled Lawrenz.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard Lorenz Hammond. Oh really Yeah, anyway, by Larry,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: so he'll just came Larry.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I thought they probably pronounced it Lawrence.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: But if you recognize his last name, not from Jurassic Park,
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: but from the electric organ. Because he was indisputably the
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: inventor of the electric organ. He was the first guy
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: to really put everything together and make it work.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Specifically obviously the Hammond organ and very much notably the
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Hammond B three, which was one of the organs in
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: his line of organs. And if you are a piano
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: player or an organist, a keyboard person, then you're like,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, speak to me, baby.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: If you're not, and you're like a Hammond B three,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: what's that? It is the sound of rock and roll.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Refugee by Tom Petty and half the Songs of Boston,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: and it's oh yeah, you know the big organ solo
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: in the Big Boston Suite. It is like a rolling
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: stone by Bob Dylan and a wider shade of Pale
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: by Procol Harum.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: It is in so many songs that you know and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: love one of the more.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: And that's not to mention you know, jazz and everything
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: else that the Hammond B three was used for. But
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: it really made his mark on rock and roll in
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies. Even though it was built and
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: created in nineteen thirty five, and even though Larry Hammond
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: by all accounts was tone deaf and did not play
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: a note of any instrument ever in his life.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that by his own admission. From what
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: I understand, it's like Leo Fender. Yeah, I forgot about that.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: But yeah, one other I think one other group that
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: requires shouting. I think doctor Teith played a Hammond B three.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Of course, absolutely, I'm pretty sure. So, yeah, he Larry
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Hammond didn't know what he was doing with music, but
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: he knew what he was doing with engineering, specifically electrical engineering,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: which at the time he was studying this he was
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: born in eighteen ninety five, started studying in the first
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: couple decades of the twentieth century. This was some brand
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: new stuff. And this guy was at the bleeding edge
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: of the whole thing, leading, which I used correctly. Finally,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: did you say leading or bleeding? I said bleeding.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: No, bleeding is when it leads to bad things.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: People have been electrocuted.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's a good point.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: So Hammond was born a young boy in just outside Chicago,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: in the suburb of Evanston, Illinois, like you said, in
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five, and he was the only boy of
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: four kids. He had three sisters, had a father who
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: was a banker who died when he was two, and
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: a mother named is a great name, Idea Strong Hammond,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: who was an impressionist painter and you know, pretty accomplished
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: in an artist and a creative. So once mister Hammond dies,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: when little Larry's just too she says, you know what,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: I'm packing up my three girls and my son and
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: we're going to Europe where you can be submerged in
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: the arts and get what I think is probably a
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: more proper education.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So from the time they moved there when he
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: was four till the time they moved back to Evanston
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: when he was fourteen, they lived in Geneva, in Dresden
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: and Paris. And one of the things about Larry Hammond
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: was from an extraordinarily young age, he was a tinkerer.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: He wanted to know how things worked. And when they
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: landed in Paris, I'm not sure exactly what h he
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: was at the time. I think he was a tween possibly,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: but France was like this was when the first cars
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: were really being designed to built and France was the
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: epicenter of that, and Larry little Larry Hammond happened to
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: live there at the time, so he was taking apart
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: engines from a very young age and actually came up
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: with the crude version of an automatic transmission a decade
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: before it was ever actually patented. That's what this kid
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: was doing as a tween.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, as a twelve year old, he was incredibly brilliant,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: probably a genius. I know that word is thrown around
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: a lot, but if you're doing that kind of thing
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: when you're twelve in the early twentieth century, then that
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: qualifies in my book.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was putting on like half a bottle of
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Polo cologne and wandering around the mall. At this age,
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: I was.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: In the basement hiding from Satan.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: There you go. That's another thing to do. That's another
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: thing to do.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: So the Hammonds were, like I said, they were all
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: pretty accomplished. Well, the mom was pretty accomplished, and all
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: his sisters would go on to do great things. His
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: sister Unis was a writer and a poet and edited
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: a poetry magazine. His sister Louise was a missionary in
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: China who would transcribe Christian hyndls and religious books in
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Chinese and his sister Peggy was a musician. She was
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: a cellist, a world class cellist, but young Larry was
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: not inclined musically. When they went back to Evanston, Illinois,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: he continued continued to sort of experiment and take things
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: apart and put him back together, and eventually he got
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: a little taste of success early on, when he was sixteen,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: he had his first US patent with a kind of
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: a new and improved barometer that he ended up making
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: a few hundred books off of which you know, was
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: pretty good for a sixteen year old. And the nineteen
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: what is this twenties at this point, teens.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he would have been it would have been nineteen four,
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: nineteen nine, Okay, yeah, nineteen eleven, somewhere in there. All right,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: So yeah, he ended up going on to car. I
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: don't think there was ever any question whether he was
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: going to or not, thanks to his mom and her
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: strong will about education and work ethic and he ended
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: up at Cornell in Ithaca, and apparently, according to the
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Larry Hammond legend, he finally kind of came to understand
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: his own maybe mission in life, if not brilliant. From
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: when I read you had a bit of an ego
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: here or there, although he was generally a good guy.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: This story kind of jibes.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I've never known any genius inventors to have large egos, right,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: It's unusual.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Usually very meek and they hide in the basement from
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Satan too.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: But the night before exams, he and his friends went
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: out to Syracuse and were drinking, drinking, drinking, and caught
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: the last train back to Ithaca. And when they got
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: to class, they were still kind of drunk, and Larry
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Hammond wandered into the wrong class. Did he not what
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: happened after that, Chuck?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Well, apparently he went in on exam day to an
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: electrical engineering class that he wasn't even taking an ACE
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: the final or ace the exam.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a final.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: And I think, like you said, as the legend goes,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: that's when he was like, huh, I'm a pretty smart
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: guy and I am good at inventing things, and so that's.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: What I'm going to dedicate my life to.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not only that he was going to be
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: an independent inventor. That is that's a life choice.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Right there, Oh right, like not going to work for
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: ge or Westinghouse or whatever.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Right, and he didn't. He ended up going somewhere I
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: don't remember where. He had a couple of jobs for sure,
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: especially to start out. But the first thing he did
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: after Cornell was to go and list in World War One. Yeah,
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: and I think he was stationed in France for a
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: little while, was mistaken for a French deserter because his
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: French was so good. Another part of his legend took
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: a little story. But then after that he moved to
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Detroit and he took a job. He became chief engineering
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: he's still very young, at a company made boat engines,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: because remember he had spent a lot of his tweens
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: taking engines. Apart he could ace an electrical engineering final,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: but he also was studying mechanical engineering at the time,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: so it makes sense that he was working at a
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: company that made boat engines.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he it was called the Gray Motor Company.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And apparently the guy he was working for was someone
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: that served with him an army and said, I think
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: it wasn't enough money or something, and under the table,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: this guy paid him an extra three hundred bucks a
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: week that no one knew about, just to keep him
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: working on these boat engines. Man that he knew he
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: was that valuable and that he probably shouldn't be making
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: boat engines. So he greased the wheel, he greased the
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: palm a little bit, he greased the propeller.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: But remember he wanted to be an independent inventor. And
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: if you have the spirit of an inventor and the
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: ego of somebody who can ace an electrical exam without
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: taking the test, no amount of money is going to
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: make you satisfied spending your life making boat engines for
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: somebody else. So he struck out, and I think he
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: did it the spot.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Struck out as in failed like baseball, no.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: The other way around, like struck out on his own exactly,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: just so people know. I think he was still working though,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: and like at night, he was working on his own stuff.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: So this was while he was working at the boat company,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: from what I understand. But he came up with something
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: called the tickless clock, not ticklish clock, a tickless clock
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: that you couldn't hear tick because apparently that drove him crazy.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: And I feel this guy. If you've ever had a
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: loud clock in the room with you while you're trying
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: to sleep, there's nothing else you can concentrate on except
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: the stupid ticking of that stupid clock. And Larry Hammond
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: felt the same way, so he invented one that didn't
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: make the ticking sound.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: That's right, and he was like, you know what, I'm
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: going to sell this idea. He sold that idea, made
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: some pretty good money on it, enough that he was
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: able to move to New York and open up his
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: own sort of invention factory, and he invented something there
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: that kind of was the beginning of what would end
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: up like informing his future career in a lot of ways.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And that was the synchronous motor.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: In America, at the time we were making this is
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: the early twenties, they were making the switch to sixty
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: herts from fifty herts. Westinghouse came along and they had
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of sway, obviously, and said, you know what,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: this arc lighting system we have looks a lot better
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: at sixty herts. We need everything to be the same,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: So United States, can we all move to sixty herts?
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: In the government said sure.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, oh sorry, So sixty herts is sixty cycles
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: a second, and it's part of alternating current, which, as
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: we remember, won out the current wars because you can
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: send it over very long distances with very little loss
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: of of energy. Right. Yeah, So they switched over to
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: sixty cycles a second, and Hammond said, well, wait a minute,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: that's that's precise. Like we're talking about a precise like
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: something is moving back and forth between the poles sixty
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: times a second, and we're talking about electrons. You can
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: set your watch by electrons basically. So his synchronous motor
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: plugged into that sixty cycle a second electrical current, and
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: it created a motion that spun just as reliably as
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: those electrons switch poles back and forth sixty times a second.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: And if you're thinking, I don't even know what this means, guys,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: who cares? What this means is all of a sudden,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: you can electrify things that were previously not electrified. Yeah, like, oh,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know that tickless clock that you still had
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: to wind over and over, like every clock in the
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: world that you had to wind over and over.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: By the way, chuck, that tickless clock. The way it
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: was cliss is the motor was put into a soundproof box.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty easy, which.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Means that you could also say it was a tick
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: in the box. Okay, So the synchronous motor though, this
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: was the fact that it was very precise, that it
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: was going to spin X number of times every second.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: That was a really big deal because if you have
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: something that is that precise and that has is current,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: is getting an electrical current that's keeping it that precise,
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: no matter what, you can do all sorts of things,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Like you said he had an electrical clock. You can
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: make little shutter spin in front of people's eyes without
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: them even realizing that they're spinning. All sorts of things
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: you can do with a synchronous motor, and that was
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: the basis of a lot of his inventions that followed.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: All right, I think that was a great little tease setup.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry for teasing you everybody.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: No, I love it because people are going like, what
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: do you mean shutters in front of your eyes? Well,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: we're gonna explain that right after this. We'll be right back,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: all right. So Josh left a great little tease.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: I did mention that he started making these clocks, but
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: this next thing actually happened first because he did have
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of success with the Hammond Clock Company because
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: everyone was like these electric clocks are amazing. I don't
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: want to wind my clock ever again, and you don't
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: have to. But before he found success there, he invented,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: basically invented three D movies in the silent era of
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: cinema insane.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: So remember from our stereogram, our magic Eye episode, Yeah,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: this is perfect for this. It's basically the same stuff
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: going on around the same time. But he came up
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: with something called the tell aview, and you basically created
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: a film with two cameras set a little bit apart,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: and now all of a sudden you've got two slightly
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: different perspectives of the same thing, which, as you remember
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: from our Stereograms episode, that I loves to turn into
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: depth and perspective. So then you project the movie onto
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: the screen using those two projectors, not overlapping, but alternating
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: very quickly between the right image and the left image
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: right image, left image. That sounds like a headache, and
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: it probably would be if it weren't for the viewers
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: that Hammond created that every seat had that you looked
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: at this movie through and when the left image was
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: up on the screen, a shutter closed over your right eye,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: so all you could see was your left image. And
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: then the same thing for your right eye with the
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: right image, and this all happens so fast that your
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: brain didn't make note of it. All it saw were
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: two slightly different perspectives of the same thing and turned
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: it into what's called parallax depth based on your position
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: of where you're sitting and where you're viewing an object.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Amazing, And again, this is all possible because of that
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: synchredous motor which was spinning these two little things in
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: front of your eyeballs exactly.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: And that nuts. This was the twenties, and this guy
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: came up with three D and it worked really well.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: It worked so well that people were a little put
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: off by it.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: I read an article from The Atlantic that was written
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: in nineteen forty, a profile of John Hammond. They said
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: that the movie, the one movie that he made, Hello Mars,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: was so crystal clear that it says close ups of
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: love scenes were almost embarrassing, and you could see the
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: sweat on the actor's faces. So apparently it was distracting.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: It was so realistic and so lifelike that nobody was
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: following the plot and they were maybe even a little
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: put off.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: All right, so this isn't working out as far as
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: being a great business idea. But he was like, you
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: know what, I still you know, I could make this
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: thing without those little spinny goggles. He said, I could
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: actually do it with colored lenses, these little cheap cardboard
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: things that you know, in thirty years everyone was going
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: to think is the coolest thing ever.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: And he did that.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: He created some for Zigfield himself and the Zigfield Follies,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: which was the biggest show going in Vaudeville and New York.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: He called this the shadow graph, and he had actors
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: standing behind a transparent screen and he backlit them with
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: red and a green light spaced a few feet apart,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and then projected their shadows on the screen. And when
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: you wore those three D glasses, it again created depth
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: and it looked like they were sort of leaping off
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: the screen. And Zigfield loved this one. He was like,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I'll pay you seventy five thousand dollars to use this
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: stuff for two years, which is about one point three
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: million bucks today.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Do you know how many drachmas it is? How many
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: four hundred twenty million, five hundred and seventy eight four
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: plus drachmas today? Yeah?
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: So I mean by this point he's he's rich, or
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: at the very least, he can use that money to
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: fund doing whatever he wants to do invention wise.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Being an independent inventor. He's realized his dream by this point.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: That's right in the twenty so he was in his twenties. Still,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: it's pretty great stuff. Yeah. Also, I saw that this
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: is the only effect that Zigfield used over two seasons.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Zigfield like to keep things fresh and cutting edge, but
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: he loved this, this the shadow graph so much that
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: he used it over two different seasons, which is kind
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: of an honor in and of itself.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: So let's get back to that synchronous motor, the sixty
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: cycle second that was so reliable you could never have
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: to wind a clock from it, right, all right, he Well,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: let's go back even further than that, Chuck, Let's go
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: back to the eighteen nineties, which is the same year
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Hammon was born, eighteen ninety five, and there's an American
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: inventor named that is Khill, who was the first person
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: to come up with an electro an electro mechanical not
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: strictly electronic, but it had some gears and stuff to it,
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: so it was electro mechanical. It's called the teleharmonium. And well,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: let's go back even further than that, Chuck, okay to
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: the eighteen sixties, and we're going to hop on over
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: to Germany.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm picking up what you're laying down. There
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: was a German scientist named Hermann von Helmholtz.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: And he.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: He knew music a little bit, and he's like, here's
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: one thing I know is that when you hear a
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: musical note, it's a sound way that you're hearing vibrating
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: at a frequency, like if you hear an a key
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: on a piano, it's vibrating at a very specific frequency
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: that makes the sound of what you would call an
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: a note. But here's the deal, he said, it sounds
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: more than an a note. It's very warm and there's
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: depth to it. And he figured out what you're hearing
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: is called a harmonic, which is, you know, when one
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: thing vibrates, things near it are also activated and maybe
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: vibrate a little bit, and these little background frequencies vibrating
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: along with that a note create this richer, fuller sound
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: called the harmonic.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so, Hemholtz. This big contribution in the eighteen sixties
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: is to chart all of these harmonics. Yeah, so from
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: what I understand, then he would go through and say
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: an a on a cello has all these accompanying vibrations,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: and a on a violin has all these different vibrations
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: and wrote them out as frequencies. Right, So he created
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: a scientific mathematic roadmap to recreating those frequencies using something
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: other than a cello or other than a violin. If
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: you have that information and you can reproduce those frequencies together,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: they will make an artificial sound of a violin or
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: an artificial sound of a cello. This is what Helmholtz contributed,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: which is pretty significe to kill.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: All right, So back to k Hill again.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: He was the American inventor who invented the first electro mechanical.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I don't even think you said musical instrument?
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Did I just stop with electro mechanical? Yeah? Man, what sloppy.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: That was called now you're not, You're great. That's called
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: the That was called the telehrmonium. And he created something
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: called the tone wheel, and it was you really should
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: look it up. It's kind of hard to describe. It's
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: this this very large disc shaped motor. It has cogs
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: and when you spin that rotor that working with a magnet,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: like you know, the same way you would with an
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: electric guitar. Pickup the cogs passed through a magnetic field
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: by this coiled copper wire around the magnet, and if
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: you spin it at a steady pace, it's going to
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: generate a very specific frequency, an electrical frequency, And if
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: you amplify that, that's where you're going to finally hear
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: that musical tone come out that Hemholtz was talking about
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: so many years earlier.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so what if you have say four hundred cogs
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: on this tone wheel, and they passed through the electrical
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: field four hundred times a second, it makes one full
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: revolution per second, it will generate a current with a
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: frequency of four hundred hertz, and that is the same
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: frequency as an A four note. So what K. Hills
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: has just done is create a way to reproduce that
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: a four note or any note you want to if
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: you can figure out what the frequency is thanks to Hemholtz,
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: and then build a coog that has that number of
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: little prongs or something on it thanks to K. Hill.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Right, So what he did, like we mentioned, was create
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: that teleharmonium, which was sort of like you said, the
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: very first.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Electro mechanical instrument. But it was a problem because it
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: was huge.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: It weighed two hundred tons, it costs what would be
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: seven million dollars today, and it was the size of
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: a huge train car.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Two point two billion drachmas.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: So obviously this thing's not going to sell. Nobody's interested
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: in a telharmonium. But that really set the stage for
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Larry Hammond's work.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Definitely so. And that's a really important point for inventors
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: to whenever you talk about an inventor, very very rare
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: that somebody comes up with a full idea from scratch,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: you know, they stand on the shoulders of giants. They
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: always say, that's what Hammond did. He was the first
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: person to figure out how to make this stuff practical,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: and he had the wit and the brains and the
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: interest to make it happen. And so after k Hill
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: basically gave up because he created a seven million dollars
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: two hundred ton train car of a electro mechanical instrument,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Hammond's was like, I'm going to pick this up. I
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: never saw Chuck if he knew about k Hill's invention,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: or how he knew about k Hill's invention, or if
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: he was inspired by Kle I'm not sure. I think
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: that it was who. I don't know, but he basically
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: took the tone wheel. However, he heard about it, and
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: he figured out how to make it much smaller, much
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: more practical. Rather than the size of like a huge cylinder,
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: it was a size about a silver dollar. And when
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: you get something that is that useful down to that size,
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: you can put a bunch of them together and do
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: some really amazing stuff. And that's what he did. That
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: was the basis of the Hammond organ That's right.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: It didn't initially start out that way though. He had been,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: like I said, selling a lot of electric clocks, was
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: making pretty good money doing that, but then everybody started
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: making electric clocks and his company wasn't as valuable all
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: of a sudden. And I don't think we mentioned that
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: he was. He was an independent adventure but he wanted
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: to put people to work, like he was very proud
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: of supplying jobs to people. And he always wanted to
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: have like his successful company, you know, certainly to enrich himself,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: but also so he could so he could put people
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: to work. I mean, this was a lot of this
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: stuff was during the depression. A lot of his work
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: was so he's really proud of putting Americans to work.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: And I think Hammond eventually ended up having like three
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: thousand employees when the organ was at its peak, which
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: was a really big deal to him.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: But the clock is slowing down, not literally.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: The business was though, and he was a little nervous
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: about what to do to keep the doors open. So
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: he initially thought of this tiny tone wheel thing to
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: just make like a sound, and like, hey, it can
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: be a gimmick, a little gadget and you can have
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: this little tone wheel and plug it in and it
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: makes a sound and kids will love it, almost like
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: a toy. But he had a assistant treasurer at Hammond
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: that was a church organist, and the organist was like, man,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: you should make an organ. Like if you can make
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: one sound, you can make a lot of them. And
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: apparently Hammond loved the sound of a pipe organ, and
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: that was it. He had the other thing, which was
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: kind of funny that he was making a lot of
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: money on there also when away was this auto dealing
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: bridge table. It was a bridge table that under the
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: table had a little mechanical system that shuffled and dealt
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: cards literally under the table to each player, and he
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: sold fourteen thousand of those wow in two years.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: But then everyone got tired of that.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: So he was always looking for the next thing to
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: keep the doors open, and this, like, let's replicate a
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: pipe organ, was the next big thing.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. One other thing about him. As a boss too
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: and a company owner, he was smart enough to surround
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: himself with other very smart engineers, and in particular is
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: a guy named John Hannert who basically co created the
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Hammond organ with Hammond. I almost have the impression that
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: of the two, Hammond was the idea guy and Hannert
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: was the one who figured out how to do it.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: But when you put them together, what they did was
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: they took these tone wheels and at the behest of
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: the organ, playing treasurer at the Hammond company realized that
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: if you took ninety one of them, you could essentially
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: reproduce all the sounds that a pipe organ could make,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: which is really something because a pipe organ can make
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: quite a bit of very rich sounds, a lot of
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: different sounds. That's kind of the point of a pipe organ.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize until researching this is that it's meant
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: to not only just sound like an organ, but it's
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: also meant to mimic other instruments, and it does that
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: by mimicking the timber of a different thing. A timber
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: is like like you were talking about, where if you
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: play an A on a piano, it sounds different than
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: an A on a cello. Well, the difference is timber.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: And if you can again figure out the harmonics surrounding
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: that note, you can recreate what it sounds like on
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: a piano in a or an A on a cello
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: and that pipe. Organs were able to do this. They
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: did it using compressed air mechanical stuff. John Hammon was
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: the one who's like, I can take one of these
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: giant things and size it down and make this whole
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: The same thing happen with electronics.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like you know today, if you go buy
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: a cassio keyboard, it's going to say, you know, horns, strings, right, flute, trumpet,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: guitar and those things never sound. Strings do a pretty
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: good job, but you know when you hit the if
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: you play a series of horns, you're not going to
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: say like, oh my gosh, is they're a mariachi band
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: in here. It approximates the sound in a fun and
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: useful way.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Even the samba beat's not going to dress that up
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: enough to pass muster, but you're right.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: At the very least, this was like a big deal.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Pipeworkins could do it to get different sounds that would
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: you know, like this is a flute or an organ
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: version of a flute.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Essentially, Yeah, they're called those were the stops. Like you
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: would pull a stop to let a rank or timber
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: of pipes play. You could close the stop to keep
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: that one from playing and allow other ones to play.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: One of Hammon's big breakthroughs was to figure out how
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: to do that again electronically.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Like, if you've ever seen a pipe organ up close,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: they have these little round knobs and that's called the
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: stop knob, and it's either on or off, and you
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: pull it in or pull it out, and that's letting
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: compressed pressurized air in or out to change the sound.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: I saw that. That's where the term the phrase pulling
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: out all the stops comes from. When you have all
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: the stops open, all the type are playing at the
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: same time, which is yeah, pretty cool.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So Hammond figures all this out. He gets a piano guts.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: It installs platinum switches, installs eight and a half miles
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: of wiring, installs hundreds of transistors, and they are spinning
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: these tiny tone wheel motors when you press a key,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: and it's it's pretty ingenious. So all of a sudden,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: he's electrified this thing, even though he doesn't play a
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: musical instrument, and he's instead of using these these mechanical stops,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: he has these these switches called tone bars. So if
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: you ever see a Hammon organ and you see above
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: the keys there kind of where the stop knobs are
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: in an organ, they're these little little bars that you
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: can just pull in or out and it has the
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: same effect basically. And you know, depending on who you are,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: you might have your favorite tone bar settings for different songs.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: I think the classic, like Jimmy Smith was this guy
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: that was sort of really popularized at jazz organ and
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: everyone knows like this is the Jimmy Smith setting. Like
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: if you go to YouTube and you're talking about different
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: tone bar settings, they'd be like, oh, yeah, Jimmy Smith
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: pulled all three of these on the left out and
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: that was his setting, and you can replicate this stuff.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So One of the things that Hammond was interested
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: in doing too, was rather than say, you know, make
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: this combination and it's the strings, or make this combination
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: it's the flute. Yeah, he left it up to the person.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: So like those those stops would have to do with
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: like attack and decay, like how fast the sound started
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: and how long it took to finally like go silent again.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: These were like what the sound bars were doing. It
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: wasn't like, oh, I'll press this button and now it's
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: a string and the reason why I did that. He'd
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: likened it in an interview. I saw to how like
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: a true painter would never buy a flesh pink paint.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: They would they would buy a red paint and a
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: white paint, and you know, orange paint and green paint,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: but like they would make their own paint. He was saying,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: like his ham and organ allows an organist to create
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: their own sounds by putting together this basic stuff and
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: creating something incredibly rich. And in fact, I think they
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: calculated that there were two hundred and fifty three million
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: possible tonal variations that you could come up with with
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: the Hammond Organ.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Amazing. That's from thirty eight drawbars really really cool. Yeah,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: for sure, should we take a breaker now, I was
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: gonna say we should probably take a break.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, let's do it. So Hammond's Organs
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: took off really quickly. I think he sold fourteen hundred
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: or something like that the first year. Imagine that, chuck. Yeah,
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: it's a lot so and I think they were originally
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: about thirty thousand dollars today. I don't know how many drakmas,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: but they were twelve hundred and fifty dollars in the
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: thirties the mid thirties, and it's a lot of money.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: Like you had to be wealthy, and you had to
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: be really into music, or you had to have a
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: church that was kind of wealthy to afford it. But
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: that's who he marketed to, serious musicians, home musicians, professional musicians,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: but also churches more than anything. And it worked. Like
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: you sold fourteen in the first year.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, George Gershwin supposedly the first person to buy one,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: even though Henry Ford said he wanted the first six.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: But as the story goes, George Gershwan got the first.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: He's selling to a like you said, a lot of churches.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I think what was the number, like by nineteen sixty five,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: more than fifty thousand churches had Hammond organs. By nineteen
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: thirty eight there were one thousand churches, but also baseball stadium.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: So if you've ever been to a baseball.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Stadium, they play those Hammond organs radio soap operas very
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: early on, you know started you know, if you remember
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: like the dramatic music of us So on the radio,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: that was an organ, a Hammond organ. So nineteen thirty six,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: this is just one year into the Hammond organ. Things
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: are really really doing well. And the pipe organ industry
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: starts complaining to the FTC and they're like, this guy
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: is out there making all these claims about how you
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: can replicate every sound on a pipe organ, how it
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: sounds the same as a ten thousand dollars pipe organ,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: and like these are false claims and he can't say
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: that stuff. So the FTC started snooping around and they said,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: you know what, you can't make these claims. You can't
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: say that stuff in your ads, and we're going to
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: give you a cease and desist letter that says like
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: what you can and can't say. And Hammond says, you
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: know what we should do, We should have a blind
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: listening test of it's like a John Henry thing, like
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: my little I think it was a twenty six hundred
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: dollars organ that he used and a seventy five thousand
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: dollars pipe organ and let's go head to head and
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: have experts listen in and say what they think.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's what they staged I think, I think
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty six.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I think that happened in thirty seven, but
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: this had been he'd been fighting with the FTC for
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: a while at that point.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, that was exactly the kind of guy
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: he was. He would he was exactly the kind of
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: person to come up with a blind listening test to
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: settle things with the FTC. You know, that's not how
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: the FTC did things, but John Hammond kind of made
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: them do it that way. And it was really really
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: risky because he he would have been essentially guilty of
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: unfair business practices and that could have all sorts of
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: terrible effects. But from what I saw that they weren't
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: going to let him use the name or the word
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: organ for his instrument anymore. H Really, I'm guessing that
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: that would have had a pretty big damper on business
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: as well. So he had a lot riding on this
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: blind test, and it was very mavericky to suggest it
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: in the first place. But in nineteen thirty seven at
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: the University of Chicago Chapel they went head to head.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: They hid speakers, Hammond speakers among the pipes, and put
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: both the organ, the hammin organ and the pipe organ
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: behind screens, and they had thirty different little pieces of
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: music and each one played fifteen, and that panel of
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: judges that you mentioned, they marked down which of those
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: thirty they thought had played it the pipe organ or
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: the hammin organ.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and these were professional musicians judging. I think there
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: were nine of them. Most of them were organists, of course.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: And then he also had fifteen college students, and he
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: ended up basically winning. I think they I saw different
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: numbers of how much they were correctly identifying. They were
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: wrong a third of the time. I saw they were
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: wrong half of the time. At the end of the day,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: what happened was the FTC said, and this is nineteen
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: thirty eight by this point, so this thing's dragging out.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: They said, all right, here's a new season dissorder. You
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: can't say it can reproduce a ten thousand dollars organ
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: because they could tell the difference there. But you know,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: they did find that produced like other words that were using,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: was that it sounded real, that it was produced fine music,
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: that it produced beautiful music. And he was able to
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: use this wordage and all his ads moving forward, which
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: he took as a big victory.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh for sure. And I believe it was out
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: of that battle where they calculated the two hundred and
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: fifty three million different tonal sounds. Oh interesting, And I
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: believe they started using that for marketing too, because if
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: you ask me, if I'm just an ordinary Joe, two
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty three million different tones and makes the
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: as good a sound as a pipe organ, I'm gonna
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: be more wowed by the two hundred and fifty three
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: million tones, even though the pipe organ makes three hundred
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: million different tones, because the pipe organ people aren't out
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: there marketing to me like that.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And John Hammond is so if you're a Joe keyboardist, yeah,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: you see the value in this thing, for sure.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Everyone talked about Joe the plumber. No one ever talked
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: about Joe the keeper.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Oh man, I forgot about Joe the Plumber.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Good lord, is that Sarah Palin?
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: I don't remember. I don't remember. But if you're going
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: to make a movie about the two thousand aughtsright, having
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: him like somewhere in the background would really be a
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: nice touch. Yeah.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: And Soybomb?
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: What was that?
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Soybomb was the guy who rushed the stage and I
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: think it was a Grammy's during Bob Dylan's acceptance speech.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: Oh really, I don't remember that at all.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: And he had a shirt on this said Soybomb.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: No, I don't remember that.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't remember the year, and I'm sure I
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: got some of that wrong, but Soybomb and it was right.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: It wasn't Bob Dylan. It was Bob Newhart, that's right.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: When he went was Grammy? All right?
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: So he's backtilling these organs again. Famous people are using him.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Baseball team stadiums are using him. Soap operas and churches.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Everyone's getting on board. A woman comes along by the
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: name of Ethel Smith, who probably did more to popularize
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: the Hammond or than anybody else.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: She was in a movie, a Red.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Skelt movie called Bathing Beauty and played this song, and
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: it's on YouTube. You should check it out. Ladies got
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: crazy fingers. She's so fast, And it was like a
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Brazilian kind of song called Tico Tico that became a
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: smash international musical sensation.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, and Ethel Smith was she kind of idolized John
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: Hammond because she realized what he had done by creating
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: this Hammond organ, and so it was kind of symbiotic.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Even though she didn't meet him until much later, but
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: she always kind of idolized him and was very grateful
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: to him. Yeah, because you know, without her or without him,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: she said, she would have probably gotten into an older
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: profession than music, right what she meant. And then without her,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: his his organ just wouldn't have been as well known.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, absolutely, that song was huge.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Also, Jimmy Smith, the afore mentioned no relation to Ethel
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: jazz musician, even though people before him used it, he
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: really kind of took it to a new level. And
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: then we have to talk about because I know there
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: are keyboard players and Hammond enthusiasts. They're like, guys, you
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: can't talk about the ham and organ without talking about
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: the Leslie speaker. Yeah, if you've ever been to a show,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: a concert and you've seen a ham and Organ. I
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: almost guarantee you that sitting beside that organ is this
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: giant brown wooden box that doesn't even look like a
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: speaker because it doesn't have a big, round, graded panel
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: like most speakers do. And you might be thinking, what
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: in the world is that thing? Even that is called
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: a Leslie speaker and it is the key I think
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: to and many people agree to what makes the Hamm
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: and Organ sound so amazing?
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Don Leslie was like, Hey, I came up
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: with this speaker that works really well with your organ
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: and makes it sound a lot better. Can I come
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: work for you or do you want to buy my idea?
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: And remember I said at the outset that Hammond was
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: kind of egotistical here or there, and he was also
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: I think you said, tone deaf. And apparently when you
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: put those two things together, he wasn't at all impressed
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: with Leslie's invention because he couldn't hear any difference. And
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: he also, I think didn't really like somebody telling him
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: that they had come up with something that improved on
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: his invention totally. So for decades there was a almost
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: a one sided cold war between the Hammond Company, or
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: specifically I think I called him John Hammond, Larry Hammond
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: and Don Leslie and Leslie's company. He's had no expense.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: He would he would not entertain the idea of using
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: these Leslie speakers in his organs. He wouldn't let anybody
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: else do it. But they worked so well, Chuck, that
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: if you were a Hammond dealer, an authorized Hammond dealer,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: you would secretly like if somebody came in and bought
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: a B three from you, you'd be like, let me
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: show you something in the back, and you'd take them
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: back there. You'd be like, you really have to have
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: this because it makes it so much better.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He would even change the switches out from year
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: to year so you couldn't use it like you had
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: to modify it basically to use with a B Leslie.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: So the Leslie is really interesting. It's probably we should
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: do a short stuff on it. But the secret to
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: the Leslie is it's also electro mechanical because it takes
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: your sound and instead of just pumping it out like
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: a regular speaker, it shoots the sound in two directions.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: It shoots it down to a base speaker that is
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: literally rotating, and shoots it up to these two cones.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: They look like sort of like the old ear cones
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: that you would put to your ear to hear somebody
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: better if you are hard of hearing. That were on
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: what looks like kind of like a record turntable, and
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: these things spin and it would shoot the sound toward that,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: and the sound would spin through these spinning cones and
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: come out the other side through the speaker. It did,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: you know, it's not like it didn't have any venting
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: for sound. It had these little slits at the top,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: but not like a big, huge round hole yah.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: And it was a belt driven.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Thing by a motor, and these things would spin and
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: it was a variable speed, so if you had it
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: really really slow, it was sort of a warble. If
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: you spun it really really fast, it's that sound of
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: classic rock that you know and love, or just rock
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: and roll. If you hear a key pressed with that
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Leslie speaker spinning at top speed, it's that vibrato that
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: instead of just the ware, and it makes an organ
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: sound flat by comparison when you're not using one, I'll bet,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: and really just brings it alive in a small space. So,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: you know, a pipe organ one of the reasons a
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: pipe organ sounds great is because it's used in a cathedral.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: If you're in your basement and you can't replicate a
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: really great sound, this Leslie really aids in that.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: The other thing it does as it serves as an
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: alternate portal to Narnia. Once it gets spinning really fast,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: tears open the fabric of time and space.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so hats off to Don Leslie. You know, just
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: a genius invention to go hand in hand, and I
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: wish Larry Hammond had embraced it, but.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Oh he did not.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the ego got in the way.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: I think even after he retired he tried to prevent
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: the company from from doing business with hand with Leslie. Yeah. Yeah,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: basically right when he died, they started adding Leslie speakers
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: to their setups. It's pretty cool. So Larry Hammond, I
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: think I said John again. If I did, I'm sorry everybody.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: I'm just gonna move forward. But he's he was more
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: than just the ham and organ inventor and the tickless clock,
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: the tick in the box clock inventor, or the automatic
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: bridge table inventor. He did all sorts of other stuff too. Yeah.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: He then probably the first synthesizer it's called the novachord.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: It's you should watch youtubes of this thing if you're
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: into musical instruments like old time Ewins's.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: This was in nineteen thirty nine.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Robert Mogue was a five year old who you know,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: gets credited as being the synthesizer inventor, so he invitted
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: the novachord.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: He invented all kinds of great stuff. I think he died.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: After his death, he ended up with one hundred and
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: ten patents to his name. CBS bought he died in
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. CBS had bought Hammond in nineteen sixty five.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: They had also bought the Fender guitar company, so that's
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: when CBS thought it was in the music instrument business
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: for a little while. Hammond bought it back in nineteen
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: eighty from CBS. In eighty five they went out of business.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: So like the last true Hammond B three I think
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: rolled off the line in those years and there I
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: think they made a couple of million organs. So it's
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: not like if you want to and B three organ
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: you can find them today. It's they aren't cheap, but
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: it's not like some huge rare collector item.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Or anything like that.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: One other thing I thought I thought was noteworthy, Chuck
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: a while back, you talked about how he was, like,
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: you know, a good boss, and he was very proud
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: of employing people. Two different presidents of the ham and
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: Company started out at the bottom. One is an office
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: boy and one in the mailroom and worked their way up.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: That's I mean, just having one president having done that
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: is pretty impressive, but two is really significant. And really
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: I think it says a lot about the kind of
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: company he built totally.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Suzuki, by the way, as a PostScript, bought Hammond in
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, right Suzuki of the motorcycle keyboard fame. Sure,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: And in two thousand and two they started making a
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: new version of the B three again. I think it's
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: called the x K three. And I listened to a comparison.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I'm sure where players I purists will say like, no, man,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: you gotta have the original Hammond.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: But it sounded just like it to me. It's a
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: little brighter.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Maybe they need to set up a blind listening test.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: We should have at the Rockefeller Cathedral in Chicago. But uh, anyway,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: that XK three, it sounded pretty good to me. Cool
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: for my dumb semi musical year.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: Uh, you got anything else?
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I enjoy these.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: We'll have to.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: I don't think we've done one of Mog yet, have we?
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: I don't think so you keep saying Mogue. It's very
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: clearly Moog it's mo I don't know.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: But uh we should. We should do him one day.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I love I love covering these sort of pioneers and
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: musical invention.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a good little sweet we're building. Okay, agreed,
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: A sweet sweet, So Chuck said, sweet sweet everybody, And
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: as longtime listeners know that just unlocked listener mail.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this quick correction. Hey, guys, love the show,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Thanks for tech the hard stuff. A quick correction from
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: the zenobiotics episode, Josh says during the explanation of p
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: fas that they get into the municipal wastewater and we
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: have no idea how to get them out of our water.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: That isn't true.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Granular activated carbon and reverse osmosis are two ways to
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: remove p fas from water. Lots of drinking water treatment
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: systems are currently using this technology as we speak to
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: remove p fasts, not saying they're an expensive and difficult
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: to manage, but they do exist.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Keep up the great work, Whitney B.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Whitney B. With that bit of good news,
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: I'm glad we can get p fasts out of our water. Yes.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: If you want to be like Whitney B and say
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: listen to me, you can send it in an email
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.