Franz Rudolph Wurlitzer had built up his vast musical empire from humble beginnings: born in Saxony in 1831, he emigrated to America in 1853, having no money and little command of English and became the embodiment of the all-American dream of rags-to-riches. His company based in Cincinnati benefited from the Civil War, supplying instruments to the Union Army and in 1880 they commenced manufacture of pianos and then other instruments including automatic and coin-operated instruments and around 1900 they entered a marketing arrangement with the North Tonawanda Barrel Organ Works in New York State to sell their band organs, eventually buying out the De Kleist Company who owned the works in 1909 and by now Wurlitzer also had large retail music stores in many major U.S. cities to sell their products plus other musical instruments, sheet music, pianola rolls, records, etc., etc. Organ Accompaniment to Silent Films Boothby Pagnell Irish evening will support rare church organ fund" (3 June 2013) Grantham Journal, Grantham, UK On the ground floor, an eighty-seat early cinema auditorium was created with raised stage to accommodate the organ console. The pipe chambers are directly below, and speak into the auditorium via Wurlitzer pattern horizontal swell shutters. Robin Richmond at the Wurlitzer Organ of the Trocadera at The Elephant http://stories-of-london.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MWYW-21.11.63-ROBIN-RICHMOND.mp3

Robert Hope-Jones was born on the 9 th February, 1859 in The Wirral, Cheshire. After leaving school, he was apprenticed at Laird’s the shipbuilders and then joined the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company in 1881 and eventually became its Chief Engineer. With his knowledge of the properties of electricity and his obvious interest in the pipe organ, he apparently spent much time experimenting in ways to improve the instrument. The basic premises of his studies lay in the beliefs that the pipe organ could imitate the instruments of an orchestra and that the console should be detachable from the organ. His work led to his design of an electro-pneumatic action for pipe organs, which for many is considered to be the single most important advancement in the development of the Theatre Organ. Wurlitzer organs were produced over a 32 year period (mostly theatre style, although a few church models were also made). Production peaked in 1926, when the factory turned out a completed organ for every working day of the year! The first Hope Jones book, Hope Jones Saves the World, is the blog of a ten-year-old girl who has just decided on her new year’s resolution: she is going to give up plastic. Unfortunately, it would seem that Mr. Hope-Jones’ company fell on difficult times, which led him to leave Britain and seek a new life in the U.S.A. where he arrived in 1903 together with his wife. After working for several American Organ Companies, he formed his own company at Elmira, New York, which also proved to be unsuccessful. With this failure, he merged his organ business with the Rudolph Wurlitzer Companyand sold them his patents. He became choirmaster and honorary organist of St John's Church, Birkenhead, doing similar work in connection with that institution. It was at this church and in connection with this organ that Hope-Jones did his first great work in connection with organ-building. The improved electric action, movable console and many other matters destined to startle the organ world, were devised and made by him there, after the day's business and the evening's choir rehearsals. He had voluntary help from choirmen and boys, who worked far into the night, certain of these men and boys later occupying positions with the Hope-Jones Organ Company. [2]In 1910, Hope-Jones paid a visit to the directors of the Wurlitzer company who, like many other good men before them, fell for the Hope-Jones line and entered an agreement on the 23rd. April to buy the assets of his failed enterprise. This time however, the mercurial genius of Hope-Jones was balanced in the relationship by his partners; the humane yet practical Farny Wurlitzer and his hard-nosed brother, Howard.

Robert Hope-Jones was an electrical engineer who worked for the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company. He Patented many mechanisms in connection with the operation of telephone systems. He was also a talented amateur musician, having played the organ from an early age and was organist and choirmaster of St. John’s Church in Birkenhead at the age of 17, where he went on to apply his engineering skills to developing a series of revolutionary amendments to the organ. Hope-Jones’ first milestone in organ building was the rebuild in 1886/9 of an 1846 instrument in St. John’s Birkenhead. The most remarkable feature was the electrification of the organ action, which enabled an historic photograph of the newly mobile console to be take outside the church porch. Commentators of a less sympathetic persuasion no doubt valued this facility, as it brought distance between the organist and some of Hope-Jones’ new-fangled extremely voiced pipework, precursors of the modern theatre organ stoplist. Although Hope-Jones did not invent electric action, there is no doubt that he played a significant part in its development and refinement.

Insight

A huge advance was now offered in the form of the ‘Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra’ (later known just as the ‘Wurlitzer Unit Organ’) – this could provide a fullness of sound similar to an orchestra, with a variety of instrumental sounds and effects, but under the control of just one musician, who could watch the screen and match the music to the action in the film, just as a pianist would. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r George Laing Miller (1913) The Recent Revolution in Organ Building, Charles Francis Press, New York As with all criminal cases brought by the District Attorney’s Office, the investigation of Hope Jones’ death did not conclude upon the arrest of Kiana Casey. On Friday, October 7th, I approved charges of Third Degree Murder, Involuntary Manslaughter, and Endangering the Welfare of a Child against Jendayi Mawusi (DOB: 03/09/1997), a social worker contracted by the city Department of Human Services (DHS) who was assigned to monitor Jones’ placement in Casey’s residence. Mawusi was arrested by Philadelphia Police on Monday, October 10th. To answer that I guess one needs to have played them. Unfortunately that's been next to impossible for a very long time. However there's a small 2 manual at St Mary's in Pilton (Devon) which has retained its original pipework despite having had various modern accretions built around it. This link shows what the original instrument looked like when built in 1898:

About the same time, a gimlet was forced through the electric cable of a Hope-Jones organ at St Mary's Church, Hendon, London. [6] Shortly afterwards the cable connecting the console with the Hope-Jones organ at Ormskirk Parish Church, Lancashire, was cut through. At St Modwen's, Burton upon Trent, [7] sample pipes from each of his special stops were stolen. [2] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( November 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Hope-Jones devised numerous mechanical changes to make the instrument easier to play and improve the operation and sound of the organ, including:Hope-Jones was the subject of an episode titled "Robert Hope-Jones and his Wurlitzer" from the 1990 cable television series Invention! on the Discovery Channel. [19] Few Hope-Jones organs have survived to the present time. Probably the largest and most complete example in the UK was the partially restored 1901 organ at Battersea Old Town Hall, now the home of Battersea Arts Centre, but much of the instrument was destroyed in a fire in 2015. [16] The organ at the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, built by Hope-Jones in 1908, has most of its original Hope-Jones ranks still intact and playable, although it has been vastly enlarged since then. [17] Another fully preserved Hope Jones organ is his Opus 2 at the First Universalist Church in Rochester, New York, which has been described as sounding "weighty and lush", with large-scaled 8-foot (2.4m) stops. [8] The Anglican Cathedral of St John The Baptist, St John's, Newfoundland is home to the one of only two Hope-Jones organs ever installed in Canada (built in 1904); the organ was rebuilt by Casavant Frères in 1927, however many original components remain. The other Canadian organ was that of Vancouver's Christ Church Cathedral of 1911, replaced by a Casavant in the 1940s. [18] Between them, they constrained Hope-Jones to a more commercial discipline and he produced a number of instruments from 1911 under the generic title of the Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra. These contained the essential features that characterised Wurlitzer organs until the cease of production in the late 1930’s; Wurlitzer’s early sales methods followed those of Hope-Jones, with extravagant advertising testimonials extolling the tonal perfection of instruments that had yet to be installed, never mind play a note of music. Listen to Mr. Richmond playing the Hammond Organ during a Music While You Workprogramme for the BBCin 1963