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Up for sale a RARE! "Wurlitzer Electric Piano" Benjamin Miessner Hand Signed 3X5 Card Dated 1961.
ES-4311
Benjamin Franklin Miessner (July
27, 1890 – March 25, 1976) was an American radio engineer and inventor. He is
most known for his electronic organ, electronic piano, and other musical
instruments. He was the inventor of the Cat's whisker detector. Miessner was born
in Huntingburg, Indiana to Charles and
Mary (Reutopohler) Miessner and was the brother of Otto Miessner. He attended school in Huntingburg and
graduated from high school in 1908. He then enlisted in the U. S. Navy, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Electrical School
in Brooklyn, NY in 1909. He was assigned to a naval radio station
in Washington, D.C. to be a radio operator. It was while he was
in Washington that he invented the "cat whisker" detector which
allowed for receiving radio waves by crystal sets. He was also promoted to Chief
Operator. He left the Navy to work with John Hays Hammond Jr. and
Frtiz Lowenstein in 1911. The group worked on a wireless control system for
torpedoes. While working for Hammond he invented a superheterodyne radio
system. The group also invented the Electric Dog, a prop they used to
demonstrate how light changes the electrical conduction properties of selenium. Miessner
and Hammond had a falling out and Miessner left the company in 1912. He studied
electrical engineering at Purdue University from 1913-1916
where
he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity. He also
communicated with Nikola Tesla Referral about
the book on radio dynamics he was writing and Tesla Referral’s own work in the field of
radio controls. In June 1916 he married
Eleanor M. Schulz in Buffalo, NY. They would
have two daughters, Jane and Mary. That same year he returned to the Navy as an
Expert Radio Aid for Aviation where he developed radio systems for airplanes
and published his book “Radiodynamics, the wireless control of
torpedoes and other mechanisms”. During World War I, he was stationed in Pensacola, Florida where
he was in charge of the radio laboratory of the Navy Aeronautic Station. After
World War I, he began working for Emil J.
Simon on radio for aircraft and transoceanic receivers in New York City. He moved to Chicago in the early 1920s where he worked for he founded the company’s acoustical lab. He moved
back east to New Jersey in 1926 to
be the chief engineer at Garod Corp. In the late 1920s, Miessner sold over
fifty of his patents to RCA and received around $750,000 for
them. He used this money to begin his own company, Miessner Inventions, Inc
in Millburn, New Jersey. Over
the next thirty years he would become a leader in the fields of electrical
radio receivers, electronic musical instruments and receivers, phonography,
radio dynamics, directional microphones for aircraft and submarines, aircraft
radio, and other devices. He also developed a new system of sound recording and
reproduction and perfected the Wurlitzer organ and electronic piano. In
1929, he published his second book, All-electric Radio Receiver Design and in 1936 he had fairly long
article on electronic music and instruments published in the Proceedings of the
Institute of Radio Engineers. In
the early 1930s he worked with his brother, Otto, to invent an instrument
called a rhythmicon. Unfortunately for them, Léon Theremin had already developed a similar instrument
with the same name. In
1934, one of Miessner’s patents was used by the Everett Piano Company in
the first large scale production on an electronic organ known as the Orgatron. In 1954, the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company used
his 1935 design for an amplified conventional piano as the basis for their
highly successful Wurlitzer Electric Piano.
In
1937 Miessner designed an electric violin and cello. He would be involved in a copyright battle with another company on the violin’s
design, which he lost. In 1955 he took the
U.S. Patent Office to court to recoup a $25.00 filing fee he had to pay make an
appeal. A decision was made that day (possibly before he filed the appeal)
which made the appeal, and the fee, unnecessary. When the Patent Office would
not refund his money he took them to court where the U.S. Court of Appeals
ruled against him. When
Miessner dissolved his company in 1959 he had been granted over two hundred
patents and sold about one hundred fifty of them. While most of his
patents had to do with electronics, sound, and music, others were variations
from that work. Such as his inventions to adjust the string tension on a tennis
racket[18] and for a non-leaking fountain pen.