The First Electric Organ Ever Built. In the Collegiate Church at Salon, Near Marseilles, France (1866).
This form of mechanism, therefore, earned a bad name and was making little advance, if not actually being abandoned, when a skilled electrician, Robert Hope-Jones, entered the field about 1886. Knowing little of organs and nothing of previous attempts to utilize electricity for this service, he made with his own hands and some unskilled assistance furnished by members of his voluntary choir, the first movable console,[4] stop-keys, double touch, suitable bass, etc., and an electric action that created a sensation throughout the organ world. In this action the "pneumatic blow" was for the first time attained and an attack and repetition secured in advance of anything thought possible at that time, in connection with the organ or the pianoforte.
Hope-Jones introduced the round wire contact which secures the ideally perfect "nibbing points," and he makes these wires of dissimilar non-corrosive metals (gold and platinum).
He replaced previous rule-of-thumb methods by scientific calculation, recognized the value of low voltage, good insulation and the avoidance of self-induction, with the result that the electro-pneumatic action has become (when properly made) as reliable as the tracker or pneumatic lever mechanism.
DESCRIPTION OF THE ELECTRIC ACTION.
The electric action consists substantially of a small bellows like the pneumatic lever, but instead of the valve admitting the wind to operate it being moved by a tracker leading from the key, it is opened by an electro-magnet, energized by a contact in the keyboard and connected therewith by a wire which, of course, may be of any desired length. We illustrate one form of action invented and used by Hope-Jones.[5]
Within the organ, the wires from the other end of the cable are attached to small magnets specially wound so that no spark results when the electric contact at the key is broken. This magnet attracts a thin disc of iron about 1/4 inch in diameter, (held up by a high wind pressure from underneath) and draws it downward through a space of less than 1/100 of an inch.
The working is as follows: The box A is connected with the organ bellows and so (immediately the wind is put into the organ) is filled with air under pressure, which passes upwards between the poles of the magnet N. Lifting the small iron disc L it finds its way through the passage L into the small motor M, thus allowing the movable portion of the motor M to remain in its lower position, the pallet C1 being closed and the pallet C2 being open. Under these conditions, the large motor B collapses and the pull-down P (which is connected with the organ pallet) rises.
