Robert Hope-Jones

Robert Hope-Jones (9 February 1859 – 13 September 1914) was an English musician who is considered to be the inventor of the theatre organ in the early 20th century. He thought that a pipe organ should be able to imitate the instruments of an orchestra, and that the console should be detachable from the organ.

Jones was born in Hooton, Cheshire, one of nine children of William and Agnes Hope-Jones. His younger brother was the horologist Frank Hope-Jones. He started learning the organ at an early age, and by the age of nine, he was playing for occasional services at St Mary's Church, Eastham. As a child, he was sickly and was privately tutored. He was sent to the South of France annually to improve his health. After his father's death, when he was about fourteen, he attended Birkenhead School for a couple of years.

When fifteen he became voluntary organist and choir-master to the Birkenhead School chapel. Two or three years later he simultaneously held a similar office at St Luke's Church, Tranmere, where he trained a boy choir that became widely celebrated. For this church he bought and set up a fine organ. He subsequently served as churchwarden and was active in many other church offices. He erected an organ in the Claughton Music Hall and organised and conducted oratorio performances in aid of various church funds, training a large voluntary chorus and orchestra for the purpose. For psalms, whose verses are arranged in groups of three, he wrote what he called "triple chants", a form of composition later adopted by other church writers; he also composed canticles, kyries and other music for the services of the church.

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.

After school, he was apprenticed to Laird's Shipbuilders in Birkenhead. After going through practical training in the various workshops and the drawing office, he then secured appointment as chief electrician of the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company which became the National Telephone Company.

In connection with telephony he invented a multitude of improvements, some of which were later in universal use. About this time he devised a method for increasing the power of the human voice, through the application of a relay furnished with compressed air. The principle was later utilised in phonographs and other voice-producing machines. He also invented the diaphone, later used by the Canadian Government for its fog signal stations and, in a modified form, also adapted to the church organ.

About 1889, he resigned from the telephone company to devote himself to improving the church organ, a subject which had occupied much of his spare time for years. At first Hope-Jones licensed a score of organ-builders to carry out his inventions, but as this proved unsatisfactory, he entered the field as an organ-builder himself, being supported by Thomas Threlfall, chairman of the Royal Academy of Music; J. Martin White, Member of Parliament, and other friends. By 1890, Hope-Jones had set himself up in business to build organs with electric action.

When he became a rival and a competitor to those who had previously profited from his inventions, they became hostile and abusive. For nearly twenty years he met concerted opposition – attacks in turn against his electrical knowledge, musical taste, voicing ability, financial standing, and personal character.