Donald Leslie dies

[brownie]

From AP:

Donald Leslie

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Donald James Leslie, who created and manufactured a speaker that refined the sound of the Hammond

organ and helped popularize electronic music, died Thursday. He was 93.

Leslie was captivated with the sound of the Hammond organ when he heard it at a furniture store where he worked repairing

radios. In the store's large showroom, the organ introduced in 1935 sounded much like a theater or church pipe organ.

However, Leslie was unimpressed with the organ's sound quality in the confined spaces of his home.

He began tinkering with devices to make the instrument sound more like labyrinthine pipe organs, using mechanics and

electronics experience from a series of jobs, including one at the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington, D.C., during

World War II.

When Leslie presented Hammond with an organ speaker he had built by hand, the company rejected it and turned him down

for a job.

Leslie later founded Electro Music in Pasadena to manufacture his Leslie speaker. It popularized electronic music during the

1940s by improving the sound of organs and keyboards, including those made by Hammond, Baldwin, Kimball and Yamaha.

It wasn't until the 1980s that Hammond eventually bought Leslie's loudspeaker, which is now built by Hammond-Suzuki USA.

Edited September 8, 2004 by brownie

[Jim Alfredson]

I heard this yesterday. RIP. A little known fact is that Leslie also invented Mercotac, a rotating electrical contact first used in his later speakers but now used in medical equipment, robotics, and more.

Mercotac