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Robert Hope
 
- Jones
-
Father of TheTheatre Organ
Robert Hope-Jones, who bore a striking resemblance to the American author Mark Twain, oneof his financial backers, was born on February 9, 1859, in Cheshire and died on September13, 1914, in Rochester, New York, is considered by many to be the true inventor of thetheatre organ, he thinking that a pipe organ should be able to imitate the instruments of anorchestra and that the console should be detachable from the organ.Among his innovations were a kind of electro-pneumatic action, the 'Diaphone' and themodern 'Tibia Clausa' with its strong 8-foot flute tone, the Tibia eventually becoming a stapleof theatre organs, the thunderous 32-foot 'Diaphone' less successful but making animpression on audiences of the era, his organs also noted for such innovations as 'stop tabs'instead of 'draw knobs' and very high wind pressures, of 10 inches - 50 inches, to imitateorchestral instruments.He used expression liberally, sometimes enclosing the entire organ behind thick swell shadesfor great expressive power and he also used a system of unification which multipliedconsiderably the number of stops relative to the number of ranks. Between 1887 and 1911, he built 246 organs, his company employing 112 workers at itspeak and Hope-Jones eventually merging his organ building operations with those of Wurlitzerin 1914, Robert Hope-Jones, frustrated by his new association with the Wurlitzer company,ending his life by suicide shortly afterwards.1
 
More of Robert Hope-Jones organs can be found online at TheLancastrian Theatre Organ  Trust's Heritage Centre and Hope-Jones Museum, Eccles, Manchester and athttp://www.hope- jones.org/  Thanks to The American Theatre Organ Societyhttp://www.atos.org/one can learn much of thedetail of Hope-Jones' innovations and much about organs generally in a three-part articlebeginning athttp://www.atos.org/Pages/Journal/HopeJones/hopejones_1.htmland there is a19-page guide to Theatre Organs athttp://www.atos.org/action/ATOS-EducatorsGuide-Chapter.pdf it including a wonderful architect's drawing of a Wurlitzer organ installation.2
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