The first electronic organ was called the Telharmonium. It was invented in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahill. This organ was a monster to operate. Tones were generated by massive tonewheels. The sound of the Telharmonium was transmitted over wire and the sound was put through speaker horns (this was prior to real amplification, at that time there wasn’t a very functional way to make signals stronger). The organ would transmit the sound not only where it was played, but anywhere in the city that a line was brought to, just like the telephone. In fact, the speaker horns were usually just telephones with extended cardboard horns attached to make the sound louder.
A total of three Telharmoniums were built. The first Telharmonium (“Mark I”) was retained by the brother of Thaddeus Cahill for quite a time after his death. Unable to find anyone interested in rebuilding the instrument, the last remaining Telharmonium was scrapped in 1962.
Despite having operated a time when audio recording did exist, there are no recordings of the Telharmonium. Our only guesses to its sound come from detailed descriptions in writing. The sounds were described as clear, people truly enjoyed listening to the instrument. Technical problems frequently occurred, random clicking in the lines, and sometimes it would completely go out. The pitch would sometimes shift and a drive shaft adjustment might need to be changed while the organ was being played.
You can watch a documentary about the Telharmonium here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPlbXl81Rs0
The music is what we think the Telharmonium might have sounded like. Ignore the weird echo-ey voice in the background.
Building up to the 30’s, a few things happened: tube amplifiers were introduced bringing new and amazing feats of wonder to audio reproduction, telephone, radio communications, and many more applications. In 1935, Laurens Hammond unveiled the Hammond Organ which used the exact same technology as the Telharmonium — tonewheels — except his design was on a much much smaller scale. His tone wheel unit fit in a small unit that could actually go inside the organ console. The tones of his organ were picked up by small microphone pickups and amplified by the tube amp. Just like the Telharmonium, the sound is altered by additive synthesis — adding sine waves at different pitches together to create harmonic waveforms.
Read more about the Telharmonium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium
Read more about the Hammond organ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_organ
Read more about Additive Synthesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_synthesis
