omitting the soundboard, contributed to its ultimate lack of success, because an instrument like this was unsuitable for most of the standard repertory. In 1954 he therefore produced a stringless electric piano, based on struck tuned reeds. It was marketed by Wurlitzer, but was only moderately successful.¹³

IV

Richard H. Ranger, who, together with Termen, Miessner and others, was present at the 1932 exhibition of electronic instruments in New York City, was another type of ‘music engineer’: apart from being a musician and electrical engineer he was an entrepreneur who wanted to make money by selling electrical and electronic devices which he manufactured himself. As will be shown later, Ranger had, as many other moderately sized enterprises, to succumb to the superior development capabilities and marketing power of a larger firm.

In his youth, Richard Howland Ranger (1889–1962) had a keen interest in music and became an accomplished pianist and organist. He studied electrical engineering at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also pursued studies in music at the nearby New England Conservatory in Boston. Ranger joined the army in 1917 serving in the signal corps in Europe. His monograph on ’Artillery Lines of Communication’ (1918) was commissioned by the military. Soon after the end of the war he joined the RCA working under the eminent radio engineer Ernst F.W. Alexanderson. In the early twenties he developed a successful radio facsimile system which in 1923 was effectfully demonstrated with transatlantic and transpacific transmissions.¹⁴

At the end of the 1920s Ranger left RCA to found his own firm. Trying to combine his interests and talents in music and electrical engineering he developed electronic musical instruments. His ambition was ‘to make music out of electric howls, radio squeals, and hums, unfolding . . . new horizons of power and beauty.’ In June 1931 he made the first public demonstration of his newly developed pipeless organ at Newark, New Jersey. This ‘Rangertone Organ’ can be regarded as a successor to Cahill’s Telharmonium. It was said to have had over 50,000 separate electrical circuits; according to Ranger a home model would have cost $ 5,000. The organ was therefore not geared to the mass market. In view of the cumbersome size, high price and various other shortcomings only a few specimens of this ’mini-telharmonium’ were sold.

But in spite of all his endeavours, Ranger’s firm was everything but thriving. In this situation the military called again. During the Second World War Ranger returned to the Signal Corps as a Colonel. He was head of the Army Air Corps Radio and Radar Test laboratories in Orlando, Florida, worked at the Army-Navy Electronic Standards Agency and, from mid-1944 onwards, was in charge of the electronics section of the American intelligence mission in Europe, examining German advances in electronics. In 1945 Ranger came across the German AEG magnetic tape recording system, the magnetophone, and also the magnetic tape,