Vintage “Wurlitzer Electric Piano" Benjamin Miessner Signed 3X5 Card Dated 1961 For Sale

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Vintage “Wurlitzer Electric Piano" Benjamin Miessner Signed 3X5 Card Dated 1961:
$499.99

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. 

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