00:00 Laurens Hammond invented the electric organ, specifically the Hammond B3, which had a significant impact on rock and roll music in the 60s and 70s, despite Hammond himself being tone deaf and not playing any instruments.

05:17 Laurens Hammond was born in 1895 and showed an early aptitude for tinkering and inventing, eventually becoming an independent inventor.

10:24 Laurens Hammond worked at the Gray Motor Company in Detroit, but eventually left to become an independent inventor and created a tickless clock and a synchronous motor that could electrify previously non-electrified objects.

15:28 Laurens Hammond invented a synchronous motor that could be used for various purposes, including creating a film with two cameras to produce 3D movies in the silent era of cinema.

20:29 Laurens Hammond's 3D film technology, which used colored lenses instead of spinny goggles, was so realistic and lifelike that it was considered distracting and not a great business idea, but he found success with his shadow graph invention, which projected actors' shadows onto a screen and created a 3D effect when viewed with glasses.

25:32 Laurens Hammond took the idea of the tone wheel from Cahill's teleharmonium and made it smaller and more practical, eventually using it as the basis for the Hammond organ.

30:29 Laurens Hammond, along with engineer John Hannert, created the Hammond organ by using tone wheels to reproduce the sounds of a pipe organ electronically, allowing for different sounds and settings.

35:14 Laurens Hammond designed the Hammond organ to allow organists to create their own sounds by combining different settings, resulting in 253 million possible tonal variations.

40:27 Laurens Hammond staged a blind listening test in 1937 to settle a dispute with the FTC, where professional musicians and college students judged whether the Hammond organ or a pipe organ was being played, and although the judges were wrong a third or half of the time, the FTC allowed Hammond to continue using certain wordage in his ads and he took it as a victory.

45:20 Ethel Smith and Jimmy Smith were influential in popularizing the Hammond organ, and the Leslie speaker, which was initially rejected by Laurens Hammond, became a crucial component in creating the unique sound of the organ.

50:16 Laurens Hammond's rejection of the Leslie speaker, which aids in replicating great sound in small spaces, was due to his ego, but after his death, the company started adding Leslie speakers to their setups and CBS bought Hammond in 1965, with Suzuki buying it in 1989 and producing a new version of the B3 in 2002.