Laurens hammond biography for kids ages

Laurens Hammond with his invention, the Hammond organ. Laurens Hammond works on desk clocks in Chicago, c. Photograph by Jun Fujita. After his father died in , his mother moved the family to Europe in order to resume her art studies. The family, including three sisters, one the writer Eunice Tietjens, lived in Paris, but soon left for Geneva, and later Dresden, because of the turmoil over the Dreyfus affair.

The family returned to Evanston in Fascinated by science, Hammond patented his first invention, an automobile transmission, while barely a teenager. In , he sold his idea for an inexpensive yet sensitive barometer. Hammond attended Evanston Township High School and then Cornell University from to , graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering.

After serving in France, he was discharged as a captain in May For two years, he served as the chief engineer of the Gray Motor Company, a manufacturer of marine engines.

Laurens Hammond (January 11, – July 1, ), was an American engineer and inventor.

During this time, he designed a diesel car engine, but could not sell the idea. In , he sold his design for a "tickless" clock and with the money set up a studio in New York City to work full time as an inventor. Hammond developed a synchronous motor that was in phase with the sixty-cycle alternating current that was then becoming standard in the United States.

This motor was the basis for many of his later inventions. Its first use, in , was the Teleview, a device for creating three-dimensional movies using a special, dual-lens camera and an eyepiece similar to a stereoscope.