The Robb Wave Organ is an electronic organ invented in 1927 by Canadian inventor F. Morse Robb in

Belleville, Ontario Belleville is a city in Ontario, Canada situated on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, located at the mouth of the Moira River and on the Bay of Quinte. Belleville is between Ottawa and Toronto, along the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. Its population ...

. It uses a unique type of tone wheel synthesis to reproduce pipe organ tones and is one of the first electronic organs ever made.Morse Robb - The Canadian Encyclopedia
/ref> While not as commercially successful as its main competitor, the

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...

, The Robb Wave Organ predates the Hammond (and other competitors such as Conn and the Baldwin) in conception, patents, and manufacture and release for public sale.Brown, J. J. "Ideas in Exile". Toronto, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1967. pp. 236-345.

History

Frank Morse Robb began researching and developing an electronic organ. He started with the theory that the best way to duplicate an organ tone was to start with a recording of the waveform and then find some way to recreate it electrically. Achieving this, he demonstrated a small instrument in Belleville on November 4, 1927. The instrument consisted of 8 notes, each of a different tone quality. The notes were: C E F G G# A B C¹. The tone quality could be modified by dial control. Robb filed patents for the organ on September 29, 1927 both in Canada and the United States, and received Canadian Patent No. 284183 on October 23, 1928, and United States Patent No. 1785915 on December 23, 1930.Brown, J. J. "The Inventors". Toronto, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1967. pp. 121-123. Robb then produced a five-octave single manual organ in 1932, followed by the Model "K", a two-manual, 32 pedal note organ in April 1934. The tone generation portion of the organ was meant to be placed in a separate room from the organ console, thus minimizing the noise generated by the spinning motors and gears.Barnes, William. "The Contemporary American Organ". New York, J. Fischer & Bro., 1937. pp. 355-357. The completion of the Model "K" instrument precipitated a visit from Lady

Flora Eaton Sarah Evelyn Florence "Flora" Eaton, Lady Eaton, (; November 26, 1879 – July 9, 1970) was a Canadian socialite, philanthropist and nurse. As the wife of Sir John Craig Eaton, who inherited the Eaton's department store business, she was a member ...

, who then had Robb Wave Organs installed in both Toronto and Montreal

Eaton's The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew ...

stores, where demonstrations were given to critics and the general public. : The Robb Wave Organ Company was incorporated on September 21, 1934. Although there was good critical reaction to the organ, only 15 to 20 were ever made. Unable to find proper funding due to

the depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion ...

, Robb shut down the project in 1938. Only one organ survives partially intact, at the

National Music Centre The National Music Centre (NMC; french: Centre nationale de musique) is a non-profit museum and performance venue located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The centre's permanent building, branded Studio Bell, is located at 850 4th Street S.E. in Down ...

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

, Alberta.

Tone generation

The Robb Wave Organ, so called because of its method of synthesis of pipe organ waveforms, is a tone wheel organ like the

, but uses a different type of tone wheel. While the Hammond relies on a form of

additive synthesis Additive synthesis is a sound synthesis technique that creates timbre by adding sine waves together. The timbre of musical instruments can be considered in the light of Fourier series, Fourier theory to consist of multiple harmonic or inharmoni ...

by adding the frequencies of several sine wave tone wheels together at different levels in order to create the harmonics of a particular timbre, a steel tone wheel on the Robb Wave Organ contains the full waveform that is being recreated. This waveform has been carved from a picture of a pipe organ note that was played through an

oscilloscope An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...

, showing the distinct waveform of that pipe organ note. The particular organ that Robb used to record these waveforms was installed at Bridge Street United Church in Belleville, Ontario. The only stop that does not use the waveform from this organ is the Flora 8' stop, which uses the sound of Lady Flora Eaton's voice for the waveform. Using twelve separate tone wheel shafts geared off of one axle and each containing several tone wheels of varying diameter and waveform pattern, Robb was able to use varying combinations of pickups around the tone wheels to create different sounding organ stops. The electrical signals generated by the pickups and the spinning tone wheels were then fed through a vacuum-tube amplifier to a loudspeaker unit. The construction and layout of the two manuals and pedal board conform to the specifications laid down by the

Royal College of Organists The Royal College of Organists (RCO) is a charity and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, with members worldwide. Its role is to promote and advance organ playing and choral music, and it offers music education, training and de ...

. This was to ensure compatibility of playing between the Wave Organ and a pipe organ. The stops on the organ are as follows: Upper Manual Stops ** 8' - Gamba ** 8' - Night Horn ** 8' - Oboe Dolce ** 8' - Stopped Diapason ** 8' - Viol ** 8' - Oboe ** 8' - Flora ** 8' - Cello ** 8' - Horn Lower Manual Stops ** 4' - Dolce Flute ** 8' - Dulciana ** 4' - Violin Diapason ** 4' - Concert Flute ** 8' - Diapason ** 4' - Harmonic ** 8' - Horn Diapason ** 8' - Salicional Pedal Stops ** 16' - Cello ** 16' - Bourdon ** 16' - Gedeckt Evidence from one organ reviewer, William Barnes, shows that he much preferred the attack of the notes on the Robb Wave Organ to that of a Hammond or an

Orgatron An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed ...

(another electronic organ of the time, one that used reeds instead of tone wheels.) Barnes wrote, "I gained the impression that the "attack" of the tone was much more like that of an organ than either the Hammond or the Orgatron." He describes the tones as "good organ tones", and "a better Trumpet quality was obtained than I had heard on any other electronic." Barnes goes on to say that the Robb Wave Organ is at a disadvantage however because of its much higher price than the Hammond or Orgatron.

Notable uses of instrument

Frederick Silvester played the organ at a Toronto Promenade Symphony Concert on July 30, 1936. The piece he played was Handel's Concerto No. 2. A reviewer from the

Toronto Telegram ''The Toronto Evening Telegram'' was a conservative, broadsheet afternoon newspaper published in Toronto from 1876 to 1971. It had a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party at the federal and the provincial levels. The paper competed wit ...

wrote, "But the wonder of it was that an organ could be designed, as this one was designed, which would produce the remarkable body of tone revealed.""Playing of Wave Organ Features "Prom" Concert". Toronto Telegram. July 31, 1936.

References

{{reflist

External links

National Music CentreCanadian Museum of Science and Technology

Electric and electronic keyboard instruments Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

Canadian inventions