Hammond organ
electromechanical organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and amplifying the electric signal into a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker.
Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios—small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in genres such as rhythm and blues, rock (especially progressive rock), and reggae.
In the 1970s, the Hammond Organ Company abandoned tonewheels and switched to integrated circuits.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hammond organ” is electromechanical organ. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hammond, organ and electromechanical, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105891. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hammond organ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.