d to employ them. As an instance of their clumsiness we may
mention that the best contact they could get was made by dipping a
platinum point in a cell containing mercury! Other forms of contact
rapidly oxidized and went out of business.

Dr. Gauntlet, about the year 1852, took out a patent covering an
electric connection between the keys and the pallets of an organ,[2]
but the invention of the electro-pneumatic lever must be ascribed to
Barker and Dr. Peschard. The latter seems to have suggested the
contrivance and the former to have done the practical work.

Bryceson Bros. were the first to introduce this action into English
organs. They commenced work along these lines in 1868, under the
Barker patents, their first organ being built behind the scenes at Her
Majesty's Opera House, Drury Lane, London, the keys being in the
orchestra. This organ was used successfully for over a year, after
which it was removed and shown as a curiosity in the London Polytechnic
Institute, recitals being given twice daily.

Schmole and Molls, Conti, Trice and others took a leading part in the
work on the European continent, and Roosevelt was perhaps its greatest
pioneer in the United States.

Various builders in many countries have more recently made scores of
improvements or variations in form and have taken out patents to cover
the points of difference, but none of these has done any work of
special importance.

Not one of the early electric actions proved either quick or reliable,
and all were costly to install and maintain.[3]

[Illustration: The First Electric Organ Ever Built. In the Collegiate
Church at Salon, Near Marseilles, France (1866).]

This form of mechanism, therefore, earned a bad name and was making
little advance, if not actually being abandoned, when a skilled
electrician, Robert Hope-Jones, entered the field about 1886. Knowing
little of organs and nothing of previous attempts to utilize
electricity for this service, he made with his own hands and some
unskilled assistance furnished by members of his voluntary choir, the
first movable console,[4] stop-keys, double touch, suitable bass, etc.,
and an electric action that created a sensation throughout the organ
world. In this action the "pneumatic blow" was for the first time
attained and an attack and repetition secured in advance of anything
thought possible at that time, in connection with the organ or the
pianoforte.

Hope-Jones introduced the roun