Laurens Hammond

Laurens Hammond 1895 - 1973

A prolific inventor, Hammond was born in Illinois and graduated from Cornell University. One of his earliest inventions (1920) was the design of a silent spring driven clock. From the money he earned from this invention, he developed a small synchronous motor which could be used as a clock drive. These clocks used the AC mains frequency to regulate the speed of the clock. The Hammond Clock Company was founded in 1928 to manufacture and market these clocks. He began the development of the Hammond Organ in 1933 and filed the patent application for the organ on January 19, 1934. He was not a musician and did not know how to play the organ. He is also credited with inventing the red & green lensed glasses for viewing 3-D films, an electric bridge table which automatically dealt the cards, guided missle controls and other inventions. He retired in 1960 and died in Cornwall, Connecticut in 1973.