The
“Other” Hope-Jones
by
Colin Pykett
Posted: June 2006
Last
revised: 6 July 2020
Copyright
© C E Pykett
Abstract.
All
organ enthusiasts know about Robert Hope-Jones. All clock enthusiasts know
about Frank, his brother. But that seems to be that - there seems to be little
knowledge of the one beyond the horizon of the other, and little historical
cross-referencing between the two of them seems to exist. This
article does not purport to be anything other than an introduction to Frank and
his work for those organ devotees who might be unaware of him, but hopefully it
will be of some interest. It draws some fascinating parallels between the
technologies invented by the two brothers and between their personalities, and
it ponders on the remarkable fact that both were ground-breaking innovators
within their respective spheres of activity. Both also seemed to have had
an entrepreneurial appetite beyond the average. The names of both men continue
to reverberate today and it is this which makes it worthwhile looking at them in
this article.
Contents
(click
on the titles below to access the desired section)
Introduction
Origins
The Synchronome
Dry
Cells
Their
Paths Diverge
Wireless
Six
Pips
The
John Compton Connection
Publications
Personalities
Epilogue
Appendix
1 - The Synchronome Clock System
Appendix
2 - Energy Consumption in the Synchronome Clock System
Notes
and References
Above
- the
two are clearly from the same stock even if one was previously unaware of
it. For example, compare the pendulous lower lips and ear lobes.
Thanks to the publishers of The Organ for
permission to reproduce the picture of Robert.
Frank
in later life - looking the epitome of the famous, content and successful
businessman that he was! His face still bears those Hope-Jones familial
characteristics all those years later. Thanks to a correspondent who
wished to remain anonymous for this picture.
Introduction
All
organ enthusiasts know about Robert Hope-Jones. All clock enthusiasts know
about Frank, his brother. But that seems to be that - there seems to be little
knowledge of the one beyond the horizon of the other, and little historical
cross-referencing between the two of them seems to exist. Therefore this
article has two main functions: firstly it is an introduction to Frank and his
work for those organ devotees who might be unaware of him, and secondly it draws
some fascinating parallels between the technologies invented by the two brothers
and between their personalities. Of
course, if horologists should happen upon it, the article might also perform the
reverse function of introducing our friend Robert to them.
The
article ponders on the remarkable fact that both men were ground-breaking
innovators within their respective spheres of activity, and that both also
seemed to have had an entrepreneurial appetite beyond the average.
Above all, the names of both men continue to reverberate today and it is
this which makes it worthwhile looking at them in this article.
To illustrate some aspects of Frank’s life and work I found it
necessary to dwell also on some of Robert’s that might already be known to
some readers from the organ world. This
was because it was their start in life as siblings which resulted in some
elements of their later activities, and this became increasingly obvious as I
was compiling the article. To
understand one it is necessary to know about the other.
You cannot understand honeysuckle if you only look at its separate
strands.
But
let us begin with Frank. To horologists his name is synonymous with electric
timekeepers and the Synchronome system in particular.
The latter is so important, both in itself and to this narrative, that I
have described it in detail. Curiously,
these details do not appear frequently in the horological literature, presumably
because they are assumed to be obvious to those of that brotherhood.
Therefore I considered it all the more important to record them here,
albeit consigned to Appendices so they do not impede the flow of the narrative.
Some other details in the text which can be skipped without significant loss of
comprehension have a smaller typeface.
Frank
Hope-Jones was an extremely able, gifted man who was not only a professional
horologist but one who played a key role in the early development of radio
broadcasting. Most importantly in
the latter connection, his invention of the ‘Greenwich Pips’ time signal
made his name almost a household word in this country between the two world
wars, particularly as he gave popular radio broadcasts on this and related
matters. A list of his credentials
makes impressive reading:
Member
of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (as was Robert);
Fellow
of the Royal Astronomical Society;
Fellow,
Chairman, Vice-President and Gold Medallist of the British Horological
Institute;
Honorary
Member of the Horological Institute of America;
Honorary
Member of the Horological Society of New York;
First
Fellow of the New Zealand Horological Institute;
First
Chairman of the Wireless Society of London;
Chairman
of the Radio Society of Great Britain;
Medallist,
the Royal Society of Arts, London, the Institution of Electrical Engineers,
London, and the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.
From
this it is obvious that he was no ordinary man; he was known and fêted the
world over both in specialist circles and in the popular media.
It is therefore well worth while spending more time looking at his
achievements, in conjunction with those of his brother Robert.
The two of them cannot be looked at in isolation, as will become clear
from what follows.
Origins
Robert
and Frank were two of the nine (possibly ten) children born to William and Agnes
Hope-Jones who had married in 1853. Robert
arrived in 1859 and Frank, the youngest, in 1867.
At first the family lived in a style of considerable opulence in Hooton
Grange, a large mansion of almost stately home proportions on the Wirral [12], but
things changed suddenly and considerably in 1872 when the boys’ father died. That year the family crowded into a small semi-detached house
whose chief characteristic was extreme ordinariness, a stark contrast to their
former lifestyle which could only have amplified the shock of
William’s death. However it is
possible this cataclysmic change was partly the result of deliberate choice on
Agnes’s part rather than one entirely forced on them by some adverse
consequence of her late husband’s estate.
Robert, thirteen that same turbulent year, was immediately sent to a good
fee-paying school which most if not all of his six brothers, including Frank,
also attended in their turn. This
suggests that Mrs Hope-Jones, gentlewoman though she was, was rather more hard
headed and able to cope in trying circumstances than the usual archetype of
simpering Victorian womanhood which Dickens loved to depict.
She was clearly determined to do the best for her children with the
assets available to her, and she attempted successfully to eke them out as long
as possible.
When
he was seventeen, in 1876, Robert became an apprentice at Laird’s shipbuilders
in Birkenhead. Frank was still a
little boy, and in view of his later interest in and aptitude for things
mechanical and electromechanical, he must have been fascinated by what he heard
from his older brother of the then-exotic and burgeoning world of engineering so
important to Britain’s supremacy in the world.
When Robert moved on rapidly to assume a senior position in a local
telephone company a few years later, it is not only probable but certain that
Frank must have gained much knowledge from his brother of batteries,
electromagnets, relays and the other things which obviously moulded his
subsequent career. Batteries and
magnets. With them, one brother
changed the world of organ building. The
other changed that of clocks. Both
remain famous for their work. It is
remarkable.
By
the early 1880’s we find Robert as organist and choirmaster at the newly built
church of St Luke, Tranmere.
Frank was also musical – he played the cornet and may have sung in his
brother’s choir. By 1890 Robert
had resigned from the telephone company and established himself as an organ
builder. He had just rebuilt the
organ at St John’s, Birkenhead using an electric action of
his own design, much of which was entirely novel.
In particular, the circuits and engineering concepts he used were
advanced for their time. They owed much to his experience as a telephone
engineer and it is doubtful that most other organ builders of the day could even
understand them, let alone duplicate them.
By then he was 31 and Frank 23. It
is interesting to speculate how closely Frank was involved in the St John’s
organ project, because it was the product of much spare time effort on the part
of sundry choir members and friends from the telephone company.
It would be surprising if he had not been drawn in as well. Indeed,
by 1893 Frank was identified as company secretary on the letterhead of Robert's
first business venture, The Hope-Jones Electric Organ Company Ltd, so it is
obvious the two were working closely at that time [16].
The
Synchronome
A
few years later, by the time Robert had achieved fame by building several large
organs such as that at Worcester cathedral (1896), Frank was well into launching
his own career as a designer and maker of electric clocks.
According to the records of the present-day company Tann Synchronome, he
founded his Synchronome Company of London in 1895 when he was 28.
To understand the antecedents of this key event it is necessary to look
at some of his precursor activities and thinking. Not
content with merely adding an automatic electric winding facility to
conventional weight-driven or spring-driven clocks, in which he showed little
interest, Frank wanted to simplify their mechanism as much as possible.
More than that, he had a vision which led him to develop a timepiece of
such accuracy that it was used by astronomical observatories throughout the
world until displaced in the 1950’s by wholly electronic devices.
To appreciate the novelty of his work it is necessary for us to review,
as he must have done, the properties of the traditional mechanical escapement
that had hitherto been used in pendulum clocks.
As it swings, such a pendulum periodically releases an escapement which
also gives it an impulse to keep it going. Two major shortcomings of this
arrangement are the continuous friction set up between the pendulum and the
escapement, and the fact that the impulse occurs at the wrong point of the
oscillation of the pendulum – instead of impulsing the pendulum at the base of
its stroke when its speed is at a maximum, the impulse occurs when it is
scarcely moving at all, or sometimes even moving in the opposite direction.
From
his earliest work it is quite clear that Frank understood fully the surprisingly
complex physics of the apparently simple pendulum.
He realised that a pendulum is a resonant oscillator whose energy
transmutes continually from a state in which it is fully kinetic (at the base of
its swing) to one where it is entirely potential (at the extremities).
It is identical in principle to an electrical resonant circuit in which
the stored energy shuttles between the capacitor and the inductor.
It cannot be purely coincidental that the time when Frank was refining
his ideas overlapped with the activities of Hertz, Marconi and others who were
beginning to understand the properties of electrical resonance in the tuned
circuits used for their early work on wireless telegraphy.
Because the basic physics of all resonant systems is the same, he and the
others must have absorbed at least some of it from the writings of people such
as Oliver Lodge, and his keen interest in radio (of which more later) lends
support to this suggestion. All of
them understood that it was important to minimise the energy losses in their
resonators, whether they were electrical or mechanical, if they were to work
successfully.
In
the case of pendulums, this meant that the friction due to the escapement had to
be minimised or done away with altogether.
Only when this was achieved would the timekeeping of a pendulum clock be
improved, because a low-loss resonator resonates more sharply at its tuned
frequency – it has a high Q factor. It
is difficult to make a pendulum with low frictional losses oscillate with a
period other than that for which it was designed, whereas if the losses are high
it can be persuaded more easily by its escapement to swing at the wrong rate.
Frank’s
vision was to use electricity to realise the long-sought-after goal of a free
pendulum, one which was not connected to the traditional lossy mechanical
escapement. In achieving this goal
he also invented a mechanism of a simplicity that was transcendental in its
beauty of conception. It is fascinating that Robert, too, had a long term vision in
his field of endeavour which also relied on electricity and which went decades
beyond anything he ever did with organs during his lifetime: he invented the idea of the pipeless organ using
additive synthesis which is still used in some of today’s digital organs [5].
Both saw the realisation of their respective insights in terms of
magnets, coils and batteries, indeed engineers had nothing else at the time we
are speaking of (the 1890’s). Thus
again we see a intriguing parallel between the two brothers in their ability to
set visionary long term goals for themselves using the basic technology of the
day.
A
partial implementation of Frank’s ideas was first applied by him and G B
Bowell to an old skeleton pendulum clock of the type which reposed under a glass
dome, and it is said that this clock had once been in the children’s nursery
at Hooton Grange. Whether this was
so or not, such a clock was definitely modified in the mid-1890’s, and it
represented an early version of what he called the Synchronome remontoire or
electrically-maintained pendulum. It
is now in the London Science Museum. Most
of the mechanism in this clock was discarded in favour of a novel system which
impulsed the pendulum every half-minute by means of a weighted arm which was
then immediately reset by an electromagnet.
However this clock still retained its escapement wheel and
pendulum-operated pallets, and therefore the pendulum was not a free pendulum as
Frank wished. Subsequently he so
simplified the Synchronome mechanism that there remained only a single toothed
wheel in the entire system, and in that form the pendulum was virtually free.
Moreover, the impulse occurred as the pendulum was near the base of its
swing due to an impulsing mechanism of subtle design.
But
Frank went yet further. Because the
Synchronome pendulum was impulsed by an electric circuit every half-minute, he
saw that the same electrical impulse could be used to drive not only the hands
of the clock itself, but as many other hands on as many other subsidiary dials
as desired. This became the
Synchronome system in its final form which was later to be found in countless
premises world wide. All dials
would indicate exactly the same time, and the pendulum controlled clock
(Figure 1) would keep
near-perfect time. Many readers of
this article will doubtless be able to remember the clocks on the walls of their
schoolrooms or workplaces which “ticked” loudly every half minute, maybe
while they were in the silence of an examination hall.
Not all such commercial systems were necessarily made by the Synchronome
Company after its original patents expired, but they used similar principles.
Typically a Synchronome system would keep time to within a few seconds
per week. The system is described
in Appendix 1 for those who desire more information.
Dry Cells
A
Synchronome clock system was able to run on dry batteries for months, even
years, on end because the impulses every half-minute were so short, indeed dry
cells were Frank’s own recommended means of powering a Synchronome system [3,
p.52]. The association of dry cells
with the two brothers is fascinating in itself.
Appendix 2 to this article proves that dry cells would have been entirely
adequate for the job, should there be any lingering doubt.
Robert
also fiercely maintained at the start of his organ building career that a single
dry cell would power the actions of his largest organs for several months [1,
2].
The claims made by the two men for their respective technologies were
therefore almost identical to the letter. Unfortunately,
while Frank’s statements were truthful, those of Robert were wholly false.
I have discussed this in detail elsewhere on this website [2].
This discrepancy throws light on their characters, a subject discussed
later on.
Their
Paths Diverge
By
the early years of the 20th century Robert had built a large number
of organs in Britain, many of which were very small yet with distinctive
characters quite the equal of his large and better known instruments.
Some had only a single manual with a handful of stops, but even they
sported a Diaphone on the pedals! Few
Hope-Jones organs exist now, and knowledge of the smaller ones has never been
widespread. An article elsewhere on
this website describes a typical two manual Hope-Jones church organ of the day
which does still exist, though now heavily disguised [6].
The
year 1903 in which he turned 44 was inauspicious for him however, as he was
accused of an indecent act which could have led to prosecution under
contemporary law. The allegation
was never proved, indeed all the evidence is that it was promptly withdrawn.
Nevertheless he left for the USA together with his wife, whom he had
married in 1895. The
public appetite for scandal was at least as voracious then as it is now, no
doubt heightened by celebrated cases such as that of Oscar Wilde a few years previously, and continuing tasty morsels of
alleged Royal misdeeds. This might explain why some of the Hope-Jones dynasty
understandably renamed themselves plain ‘Jones’, and therefore it might be significant that Frank did not.
(Jones was in fact the original family name prior to Robert and Frank’s
parents who first made it double-barrelled).
We have noted already several parallels between the interests and work of
the two brothers, and this fact might indicate a continuing bond between them
after
this difficult time.
Subsequent
to Robert’s emigration the paths of the brothers diverged, with Robert
continuing to expand the technical envelope of organ building while Frank did
the same for horology. The key feature of Robert’s work in the USA was his
implementation of the fully unified organ which he had outlined as long ago as
1891 [1]. In this scheme
ranks of pipes were no longer associated with a single department but were
instead ‘floating’, enabling any rank to be played from any keyboard and at
any pitch. The originality and
sheer cleverness of his circuitry and novel components which enabled this to be
done is still seldom appreciated, probably because few people today take the
trouble to analyse and understand it. At
the time it was ground-breaking. It
was, of course, used to the full by Wurlitzer in their theatre organs, where a
single extended rank of Tibia pipes, say, was represented on all the keyboards
and pedals at many pitches. On a
wider front, the debt owed to Robert by any organ builder today who uses an
electric action is seldom realised or acknowledged.
In
1908 Frank was granted his patent for the Synchronome clock system and he
never looked back. But within a few years came the first world war, and in the
year it broke out another cataclysm descended on the Hope-Jones family when
Robert gassed himself, alone in a gloomy rooming house aged 55.
His widow returned to England, and the following year the Institution of
Electrical Engineers (the former IEE is now the IET) published an obituary [7].
He did not live to see the way that Laurens Hammond (like Frank, a
clockmaker) used his additive synthesis ideas to produce the Hammond Organ of
the 1930’s, nor the similar methods used by Leslie Bourn and Wallace Fair in
the Compton Electrone of the same era.
He could not have lived to see the fully digital Bradford Computing Organ
of the 1980’s which, again, used exactly the ideas of additive synthesis which he had
propounded to an audience at the RCO nearly a century earlier. Can there be any other person who has contributed so much to
the basic enabling technology of both pipe and electronic organs?
It is unfortunate that today he does not always get full measure of the
recognition and acknowledgement that is rightfully his.
Although he is often called ‘the father of the theatre organ’,
perhaps another epithet should be ‘the father of the electronic organ’.
Wireless
Meanwhile,
Frank was branching out into yet another sphere in which he retained an interest
to the end of his life and to which he contributed fulsomely.
This was radio, or ‘wireless’ as it was known in Britain for many
years because of its roots in wireless telegraphy.
By 1913 The Synchronome Company was manufacturing its ‘Horophone’
(Figure 2), a
receiver with a crystal detector designed by Frank to bring in time signals,
weather reports and news broadcast in Morse code from a few high powered
wireless telegraphy stations such as that at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Speech and music broadcasts were virtually unknown mainly
because of technology limitations, and the concept of broadcasting for purposes
of public entertainment was still some years away. The Horophone was built to the meticulous standards one would
expect from a clock making firm.
Figure
2. 'Horophone' by The Synchronome Company Ltd and an advertisement for it (1913)
Frank
also chaired the inaugural meeting of the influential Wireless Society of London that same
year, no doubt partly because he was by then a prominent member of
the British Horological Institute. From
the first, he campaigned loudly against the restrictive legislation, monopolies
and taxes which still unfortunately characterise broadcasting in the UK to this
day. Under his leadership the ranks of the Wireless Society were
swelled by professionals representing bodies such as the British Association for
the Advancement of Science and the Institution of Electrical Engineers, although
he never allowed it nor himself personally to lose touch with its amateur roots
and interests.
Six
Pips
After
the first world war the BBC was eventually formed in 1922, though it was at
first the British Broadcasting Company rather than the publicly funded Corporation it
became subsequently. In April 1923
Frank gave a radio talk on the subject of British Summer Time in which he
‘counted himself out’ during the last five seconds.
Immediately after the broadcast he suggested the idea of an automatic
clock to some studio engineers which would provide five audible ‘pips’ as a time
signal. The idea was taken
seriously by the BBC and discussed with Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal, who
for some reason added a sixth pip (presumably on the basis that, if you can’t
think of something important yourself, you simply mess about with other
people’s ideas). The upshot was
that in February 1924 the ‘Greenwich Pips’ time signal was broadcast for the
first time. The system used a clock
designed by Hope-Jones situated at the Greenwich Observatory where its
timekeeping could be easily corrected. Its
mechanism controlled the output of an audio oscillator which generated each
broadcast pip. And who fronted the
programme in which it was introduced to the listening public?
Frank Dyson of course, the very man who had not invented it.
Later
Dyson presided at a dinner at which Frank was the guest of honour. Hope-Jones
was handed six orange pips on a plate, whereupon he made a flamboyant
presentation of the sixth pip to Dyson. Nice
one Frank!
The John Compton
Connection
Although
Robert’s connection with the former John Compton Organ Company was
foundational, even Frank could claim a tenuous one as the following shows.
The
late Brian Wigglesworth spent his long and interesting career at the firm, and
he once sent me the following anecdote (which I believe he also subsequently
published):
“It
might amuse you to hear that every clock in the John Compton (North Acton)
factory was controlled by a Frank Hope-Jones Synchronome clock. A
long-case pendulum clock which lived on the wall in my boss's office and was
powered by a vast dry battery, to drive all the repeater clocks throughout the
factory.
Because
the ... clock controlled every aspect of factory time keeping, my boss,
Leslie Bourne [sic] , was most concerned that the battery should never run down, so
guess who was (for a while) required to check the battery voltage every month
and check the time, against the BBC, every week?
We
did have occasional small time keeping problems, which we resolved by placing
coins on top of the pendulum in the traditional manner. It always
fascinated me to watch our time keeping adjustments on the [main] clock being
followed by every other clock in the factory”
(
Leslie Bourn was one of the originators of the Compton Electrone).
It
is also worth reminding ourselves of the connection between Robert Hope-Jones
and Compton, as it is a story not told often enough.
Well
prior to Brian Wigglesworth’s anecdote and before moving to his north London
premises, John Compton had first set up business in Nottingham about 1902 after
a spell working for C S Lloyd of that city.
I was brought up in Nottingham, and from personal experience of some of
Lloyd’s organs I can tell you that he was a wholly unexceptional organ
builder whose unadventurous outlook may have frustrated a young turk like
Compton. This might explain why,
like some others of the day, Compton beat a path to the door of Robert
Hope-Jones who by then was well established and famous, no doubt to see what he
could learn from him. It is
significant that Compton’s activities until the firm finally folded over half
a century later rested on three main features:
1.
The universal use of electric action with circuits, home-made relays and
other components whose design can be related directly to those invented by
Robert.
2.
Using this form of action, Compton was able to use extension, borrowing,
duplication and unification to any degree he chose.
This was seen in his smallest instruments, such as the Miniatura range,
as well as the largest ones, and of course in his theatre organs.
3.
A pipeless organ system, the Electrone, using additive synthesis just as
Robert had suggested in the 1890’s.
As
well as importing all this technology Compton also copied some of Robert’s
extreme tonal ideas, and the rather unpleasant, muddy, diapason-dominated sound
of his organs bore a strong resemblance to those of Hope-Jones.
He also used diaphones, another H-J invention. In his organ at St Osmund’s, Parkstone was a pedal stop
labelled ‘Harmonics of 32 foot’, an absurd nine rank flute mixture derived
via extension from a single rank which is typical of the bizarre features found
frequently in his organs. Today it
is inexplicable that such idiosyncratic examples of organ building usually
attract admiration in a Compton organ (the one mentioned has a Historic Organs
certificate!), whereas they would be dismissed out of hand if by Hope-Jones.
I wonder why.
Publications
Three
publications by Frank are worth noting. His
‘Synchronome Miscellany’ [9] was a pamphlet which described the work of his
firm from around 1913, and it was reprinted and updated several times.
‘Electrical Time Keeping’ [10] was a standard horological work on the
subject. ‘Electric Clocks and how
to make them’ [3] is an engaging and approachable work intended for the
amateur horologist, which he edited and partly wrote.
The popularity and importance of these publications is shown by the fact
they have all since been reprinted or made available in facsimile form.
A
rarer book simply entitled 'Electric Clocks' appeared in the early 1930's though
I do not know its publisher. Its Foreword was by the above-mentioned Frank
Dyson, then the Astronomer Royal. It traces the development of the
electric clock and describes a large number of different systems. This
book does not appear to have been reprinted and it can command a high price -
one example seen online in October 2012 was being offered at £120.
Personalities
It
is interesting to compare the personalities and character of the two brothers,
and in doing so I shall only use evidence which is uncontroversial or obvious.
Much that has been written about Robert in particular illustrates nothing
more than thinly disguised homophobia on the one hand or uncritical sycophancy
on the other. I want to avoid this
here, and therefore it might be appropriate to declare my own position.
I
have studied Hope-Jones and his organs over many years and in some depth, as
material elsewhere on this website and in the published literature will confirm.
Having played some of his few surviving instruments, as well as
simulating one of them digitally [11], I find them
unattractive from a musical, tonal and aural point of view, although their
subsequent evolution into the ‘Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra’ resulted in a
different product admirably suited for its new role in the cinema.
However the architecture of all his organs at an electrical level is
impressive even by today’s standards, and by the standards of the day it was
incredible. As a visionary, Robert
probably has no equal in the entire history of organ building, and the evolution
of both pipe and electronic organs in the twentieth century followed largely the
pathways first illuminated by him.
I believe that many of those who have criticised him so loudly were in no
position to do so because of a lack of understanding of matters largely
beyond their ken or because of vested interests in other directions.
Some
anecdotal material suggests that both Robert and Frank were probably not
inclined to suffer fools gladly, though this can be a characteristic of almost
anyone at the top of their particular tree, and most such material is probably
worthless in any case. Even if it
were not, it is unreasonable to expect any gifted person to remain a shrinking
violet at all times and with all interlocutors, some of whom can themselves
exhibit unpleasantness. However, if
it existed, it is not a trait which dominated the personality of either brother,
because there is abundant evidence of their interest in and care for their
fellow men. Robert was clearly held
in great esteem by many of those who knew him, such as his choir members at St
John’s, Birkenhead, who willingly assisted him to rebuild the organ there in
their spare time together with colleagues from the telephone company.
Earlier, his choir had resigned en masse with him when he had trouble
with the priest at St Luke’s, Tranmere. When
he left for America in unpromising circumstances some of his former employees
followed him. None of this supports
in the slightest the unkind and unfounded smear that has been written or implied
about his character.
As
for Frank, he never lost interest in the common man, the amateur, and he would
have used that word to mean one who loves the subject rather than in its
pejorative sense. Nowhere is this
better seen than in ‘Electric clocks and how to make them’ [3].
The mere title and the book itself, edited and partly written by the
country’s leading exponent of the art, are touching in their unaffected
homeliness. This is confirmed by
the following statement which appears in the Preface:
“Thus
horology offers a striking example of the value of
the amateur in invention. A
profession is very apt to get into a rut; it needs to be shaken up by the
amateur who approaches the subject from a fresh point of view, uninfluenced by
the traditions of the craft or the dogmas of the text books and capable of
immense enthusiasm"
Unconsciously
or not, Frank was modestly describing himself even though he was by any
standards not an amateur but a professional of the highest standing.
If ‘horology’ is replaced by ‘organ building’ the same statement
could have been written by, and it would have applied to, brother Robert.
How similar they were. The
book goes on to describe how to make a Synchronome clock, the patented
components for which were offered to the amateur direct from the factory
provided they were for personal use only. Frank’s
lifelong involvement with radio societies also demonstrates this same benign and
caring element in his makeup.
There
is quite a lot of evidence that Robert was extremely helpful to other organ
builders, just as Frank was to amateur horologists.
Thomas Threlfall, the wealthy brewing magnate who was chairman and major
shareholder of his first company, was reportedly exasperated by the free
consultancy which Robert apparently doled out to almost anyone who happened
along. John Compton was almost
certainly one - we have already seen how strongly Compton’s business benefited
from the technical and tonal foundations laid by Hope-Jones, with little
apparent acknowledgment of the fact, and this was also true of others such as
Norman and Beard. It must have been
a considerable relief to firms such as these when their troublesome erstwhile
competitor with his formidable backers suddenly vanished from the British organ
building scene. Little time was
lost by some in using Robert’s patents well before they had expired, in the
certain knowledge that he was thereafter in no position to protect his
interests. Various authors have
even speculated that some of those who maintained Hope-Jones’s organs after
his emigration may have sabotaged them in order to gain lucrative rebuilding
contracts [13]. It is certainly the case
that some of them suddenly collapsed with myriad faults for little apparent
reason, yet today this is invariably taken as evidence that his mechanisms were
‘unreliable’. Whether these
allegations are true or not, there is little doubt Robert was badly used by some
whom he had willingly assisted not many years previously.
Both
men had strong entrepreneurial instincts, having set up their own companies at a
relatively early age. Robert was
clearly less successful than his brother in the world of business though,
judging by the frequency with which his ventures failed.
This was partly due to the proportion of time he spent in research and
development aspects to the detriment of running the business itself, and his
pursuit of time-consuming trivia which ate into profit without improving sales.
A reflection of the same trait was his insistence on including every
conceivable facility that his electric technology offered, regardless of whether
it was any use to a church organist (quint couplers for heaven’s sake? An
organ that could be played from outside the church?
A stop tab to open the swell shutters?
Sforzando effects? The list
is almost endless, yet Compton nevertheless lengthened it).
In his later years, particularly during his time with Wurlitzer, he also
became obsessive about achieving an unachievable level of perfection in the
shipped product. Throughout his
career he had difficulty working comfortably with others at Board level – like
many innovators he was an autocrat, not always a good team player, and wanted to
run the whole show.
Both
brothers were to some extent flamboyant and enjoyed projecting an element of
theatre. Robert, always a snappy
dresser as surviving photographs show, was an early cycling enthusiast from his
teens onwards at a time when heads would have turned in the street as he passed
by. Frank’s dramatic public
presentation of the ‘sixth pip’ to Dyson has been mentioned already, and he
obviously felt at home behind a microphone.
These characteristics are of a piece with their liking for business and
dealing with customers.
One
unfortunate aspect of Robert’s character which does not surface in Frank is
that he was not averse to economising with the truth when it suited him. It is probably going too far to call him a compulsive liar,
but the dry cell story alluded to above and discussed in detail in [2] confirms
the statement. If it had only
happened on one or two occasions it might have been regarded merely as one of
those promotional excesses which many businessmen fall prey to.
But to propagate an impossible myth repeatedly, both verbally and in
writing, over some years demonstrates the pleasure which Robert apparently
derived from pulling the wool over people’s eyes.
It is most unfortunate that he degraded himself and his achievements in
this way.
Epilogue
Frank’s
Synchronome Company lasted for the whole of his working life, and its name lives
on today in Tann Synchronome. When
he died in 1950 his obituary, like that of his brother 35 years earlier, was
published by the Institution of Electrical Engineers [8].
Today he is mainly remembered within horological circles, where some
amateurs continue to try to outdo Hope-Jones with new pendulum timekeepers.
His Synchronome pendulum and derivatives were used by astronomical
observatories until about the time of his death, when they were superseded by
atomic clocks. With the passage of
a further half-century the fact that his name was once almost a household word
thanks to radio has now slipped from the public consciousness, but that does not
diminish the contribution he made to the life of the nation and the world.
That
contribution can be related with little doubt to the vision, enthusiasm and
innovative talents of his older brother, Robert the organ builder, who must have
first aroused his fascination for the technology which subsequently fashioned
his entire life.
ooOOoo
Appendix 1 – The
Synchronome Clock System
The
Synchronome system consisted of a main clock or transmitter, not necessarily
with its own dial although it usually did have one.
It could drive virtually any number of subsidiary dials.
The clock mechanism used between the wars had evolved into the
form illustrated in Figure A1-1, and the subsidiary dial mechanism is shown in Figure
A1-2.
All of the mechanism of the main clock was supported on
a cast A-frame with its surfaces machined flat. 
The
pendulum was of “seconds” length, meaning it took one second to swing from
one extremity to the other, therefore its period was two seconds.
It was about a metre long and it supported a weight of about 7 kilograms.
The pendulum rod was usually of invar, a nickel-steel alloy with a very
low coefficient of thermal expansion at room temperature.
The rod carried a small and very light jewelled hook which advanced a
15-toothed wheel one tooth per complete swing.
The simple beauty of the design arose partly because this was the one and
only wheel in the entire mechanism. Note
that the wheel was not required to operate the hands on a dial as this was done
electrically.
The
wheel rotated once per half-minute, and at each revolution a vane attached to it
pushed aside a catch which released a weighted arm onto the pendulum.
Mechanical contact then occurred between a roller on the arm and a curved
pallet attached to the pendulum rod. The
clearances in the mechanism and the curvature of the pallet were such that the
impulse given to the pendulum was gradual, reaching a maximum at its lowest
point. This also was a design
feature of considerable subtlety. In
Frank’s words [3, p.32] “it will thus be quite clear that the pendulum is
perfectly free to oscillate normally at all times except when it is in the
middle of its swing; not only is the escapement detached, but it operates at
zero, thus bringing about the combination for which horologists have aimed for
years without success”.
The battery voltage appeared at the
bottom of the L-shaped gravity arm, and as
the pendulum continued to swing to the right while receiving its gravity
impulse, this point of the arm eventually touched the armature of the
electromagnets. In doing so it
completed the electrical circuit, which included all the dials in series, and
the armature then threw the arm rapidly back onto its catch.
The same electrical impulse advanced all the dials by one half-minute.
It is the most enthralling thing to watch in operation and also
frustrating, because until you know how it works you have to wait impatiently
for the next half-minute to elapse before you can see again the rapid
transitions of the moving parts, which take place in less than a tenth of a
second! A rather pleasing animation of the mechanism is available on the
Internet [14], but contrary to what its sound effects
imply, the pendulum swings in almost complete silence except for the click every
half-minute. For those used to the ponderous tick-tock of an ordinary long
case clock this seems curiously uncanny at first.
The
appearance of the electromagnet coils can give a clue to the age of a
Synchronome transmitter clock, and also to that of the magnets used in
Robert’s organs. The earliest
ones were green because of the silk or cotton covered wire used to wind them, as
this was universal during the late Victorian and early Edwardian era before
enamel covered wire had been used. Electric
bells, relays and telephones from that period used such wire, and it is likely
that Robert would also have used it for his early organ magnets.
These latter, incidentally, were wound by a small army of female workers
supervised by his wife at his first organ factory in Birkenhead.
If an early Hope-Jones organ electromagnet does not contain coloured wire
it is possible that it is not in original condition but has been rewound.
Figure A1-2.
The Synchronome subsidiary dial mechanism.
The
subsidiary dials were simple, consisting of a single electromagnet which advanced a
toothed wheel at each received impulse by means of a pawl.
The wheel drove the minute hand directly and the hour hand via the usual
gear train.
The
Synchronome pendulum would keep time to within a few seconds per week,
and to effect an improvement it was necessary to reduce still further the
residual losses due to friction with the air and in the suspension, and remove
the need to rotate the 15-toothed wheel.
This was done, not by modifying the pendulum itself, but by using
it to provide the motive impulses for a second free pendulum maintained in a
temperature controlled and evacuated vessel.
This synchronised two-pendulum system was invented by W H Shortt, and in
this form Frank Hope-Jones’s original ideas remained in use until the
mid-twentieth century in astronomical observatories the world over.
The Shortt system kept time to within a few seconds per year, and it was
only displaced when Louis Essen’s atomic clocks became available from the
National Physical Laboratory. The Shortt system can also be seen in
animated form on the website referred to earlier [15].
Appendix 2 –
Energy Consumption in the Synchronome Clock System
Every
half-minute the Synchronome impulsing mechanism required approximately ½ ampere
for about 1/15th of a second [3, p.32].
All the electromagnets of the entire system – the main clock
impulsing mechanism, main clock dial (if any) and all subsidiary dials - were
connected in series. Each magnet coil had a resistance of around three ohms [4].
Therefore the voltage required depended on the number of dials in the
system, and it had to be chosen so that the necessary current of around ½
ampere would flow. Thus, as an example, the main clock plus its dial alone
would have a total resistance of 6 ohms, requiring a voltage of
3 volts which could be obtained from 2 dry cells in series.
More subsidiary dials would require more cells.
The number of cells required was confirmed by Frank Hope-Jones himself [3, p.
52].
Every
hour, the current of ½ ampere was drawn for a total of 120/15 seconds which
equals 8 seconds. Every 24 hours it
was drawn for 192 seconds. Therefore the current was drawn for 7200 seconds (2 hours,
representing a consumption of 1 ampere-hour) over a period of 37 ½ days
or approximately one month. In
other words, each cell of the battery must have had a storage capacity of at
least one ampere-hour to work the system for one month in round figures.
Both
the peak current of ½ ampere and the required storage capacity were well within
the capability of dry cells. Large
dry cells (‘Flag’ cells) are still available today with a 40 ampere-hour
capacity, a figure which would be realised under the low rate of discharge
considered here. Therefore the
claim that the Synchronome system would run for well over a year using large dry
cells is confirmed.
Notes and
References
1.
“Hope-Jones at the College of Organists”, C E Pykett 2004, currently
on this website (read).
2.
“Hope-Jones and the Dry Cell”, C E Pykett
2003, currently on this website (read).
3.
“Electric Clocks and how to make them”, edited, updated and partly written
by F Hope-Jones, 1949 (reprinted Argus Books Ltd, 1977).
It is unclear which parts of this book were actually by the hand of
Hope-Jones, though the fact that some chapters were attributed explicitly to
different authors implies that those which were not were written by himself.
One is entitled to assume
that he agreed with everything in the book because nowhere does he say or imply
otherwise.
4.
The resistance of the magnet coil was estimated to be about 3 ohms from the
winding details given at page 41 of [3].
5. Robert
outlined his ideas for a pipeless organ using additive synthesis in the lecture given to the forerunner of the RCO
(see [1] above).
6.
“The Hope-Jones Organ in Pilton Parish Church”, C E Pykett,
Organists’ Review, November 1993. Also currently on this website (read).
7.
Robert Hope-Jones, MIEE, obituary. Journal
of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1915.
8.
Frank Hope-Jones, MIEE, obituary. Journal
of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1950.
9.
“A Hope-Jones Synchronome Miscellany”, F Hope-Jones, 1913-23
(reprinted TEE Publishing 1995). As
with [3], it is unclear exactly how much of this work was contributed by
Hope-Jones himself, though parts of it obviously were not.
10.
“Electrical Time Keeping”, F Hope-Jones, 1940 (reprinted NAG Press, London
1976).
11. "Re-creating
Vanished Organs", C E Pykett 2005, currently on this website (read).
12.
For unaccountable reasons, both Robert and Frank are frequently claimed by Wales
as two of its famous sons
(see, for example,
http://www.famouswelsh.com/06_science/science3.html,
accessed 22 December 2009).
Another website
(http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/celebs/engineers4.html,
accessed 22 December 2009)
claims that Robert was among some "Manchester
Engineers & Inventors" and that he was born "in the village
of Hooton Grange".
Yet another maintains that his first and famous
electrified organ at St John's, Birkenhead was in some mythical church of
"St John's, Hooton Grange". Obviously a lesson or two in geography would be in
order for some in that part of the world!
13.
See, for example, Clark 1993 ("An Apparently Controversial
Instrument", Relf Clark, BIOS Journal 17, 1993, Positif Press Oxford,
p.59).
14.
Synchronome animation: http://homepage.bluwin.ch/electric-clocks/Hope-Jones.htm.
15.
Shortt pendulum animation: http://homepage.bluwin.ch/electric-clocks/Shortt.htm.
16.
An 1893 letterhead identifying Frank as company secretary of The Hope-Jones
Electric Organ Company Ltd is displayed in the Hope-Jones Museum at the
Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust in Manchester.
