[SEL] Not Quite OT: Gray Motor (And Hammond Organ) Trivia

[John Culp]

I love mechanical devices, electronics (mainly of the vacuum tube sort) 
and music. I've gotten interested in old Hammond organs, which combine 
all 3. I'm reading a book on them right now, and learned that Laurens 
Hammond, the thoroughly nonmusical, tone-deaf, mechanically brilliant 
engineer who invented the organ, served as the Chief Engineer of the 
Gray Motor Company from 1918-1920. He didn't really like that job and 
was able to leave it when he invented a silent spring-driven clock 
movement. He was the inventor of the synchronous AC motor clock, which 
was responsible for the standardization and close regulation of power 
line frequency across the US. (He gave electric clocks to the 
executives of the power companies. That did the trick.) An early 
invention, when he was 10 and living in France, was an automatic 
transmission for cars. He didn't follow his mother's advice to show it 
to Renault's chief engineer, however. He invented the two-color 3D film 
viewing goggles, guidance systems for glide bombs, missiles and 
torpedos, and assorted other stuff. Not to mention the Hammond organ, 
which every modern electronic keyboard attempts to emulate. The 
spinning tone wheel and magnetic pickup tone generator of the Hammond 
was derived from the Telharmonium, a 1909 invention of Thaddeus Cahill 
that used big toothed gears as the pole pieces of huge alternators that 
generated musical AC frequencies directly (no amplification) that would 
be piped over telephone lines to speakers in subscribers' homes. The 
parts of the instrument had to be shipped in 5 railroad cars!

Anyway, thought y'all'd like to know his Gray Motor Company collection, 
especially you marine engine enthusiasts. :-)

John Culp
Bristol, Tennessee, USA