A Brief History of the Conn Company (1874-present)*
by Margaret Downie Banks, Ph.D.
Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
Vermillion, South Dakota
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
All Rights Reserved.
No portion of this site, including this page and any of the separate
pages, may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated or otherwise
used without the express written permission of The National Music Museum.
*Excerpted and updated from Elkhart's Brass Roots: An Exhibition
to
Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of C. G. Conn's Birth and the 120th
Anniversary of the Conn Company by Margaret Downie Banks (Vermillion,
South Dakota: The Shrine to Music Museum, 1994).
C. G. Conn Ltd.'s Experimental Laboratory, established in 1928, was
unique among band instrument manufacturing companies and enabled C. G. Conn
Ltd. to out-distance its competitors in the scientific development of musical
instruments. Led by Carl Greenleaf's son, Leland Burleigh Greenleaf
(1904-1978), and
Chief Research Engineer, Allen Loomis (1877-1948), the engineers in this
department had, by 1940, developed the wireless and rimless Vocabell (1932),
the first successful short action valves (1934), the first device for the
visual measurement of sound--the Stroboconn (1936)--and the first
electrolytically formed, one-piece seamless bell, later known as the Coprion
bell (1938).
One of the most famous devices developed by Conn's Experimental
Laboratory was the Stroboconn (1936), a chromatic stroboscope built to
measure
musical pitch. From the Conn Archives of the National Music Museum.
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
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Dr. Margaret Downie Banks, Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
The University of South Dakota
414 East Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
E-mail: mbanks@usd.edu
This page updated April 5, 2000.
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