Peterson Electro-Musical Products, Inc. is a music-electronics company founded by Richard H. Peterson in 1948. The Peterson company introduced the first commercial handheld electronic tuner for musicians, the Model 70, in 1964, and later its models of strobe tuners became popular among touring and studio musicians such as the Grateful Dead, The Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and Neil Young. Since its inception the company has also contributed notable inventions and innovations to the electronic organ, and its products are in use in many thousands of pipe organs, and hundreds of thousands of electronic organs, worldwide.
Company history
Founder
Founder Richard H. "Dick" Peterson (born February 26, 1925, died January 29, 2009), was born in Chicago. In his teens, he began developing a keen interest in radios, vacuum tube circuits, and pipe organs. He served as a radio operator for the U.S. Army near the end of World War II, and while stationed in New York City, developed a further fascination with the sound and mechanics of pipe organs. He founded Haygren Organ Company to build electronic pipe organs with a sound he felt better matched real pipe organs, and was the first to use multiple oscillators in the organ design to produce a genuine ensemble. He also focused on the realistic attack and decay of individual electronic notes.
Founding
Peterson founded Peterson Electro-Musical Products in 1948. He soon licensed his inventions to the Gulbransen Piano Company of Chicago to use in home electronic organs. In 1957, Peterson completed the world's first transistor organ for Gulbransen. The company went on to produce other products for musical tuning, electronic organs, home security, and keyboards, and later developed and produced electronic and electro-mechanical equipment used in pipe organs.
Expansion
In 1964, the Peterson company built a new headquarters in Alsip, Illinois, on a plot of . They built two additional buildings totaling on the company site between 1975 and 1977.
In 1985, the Conn Tuner company closed. Peterson bought their Strobotuner division, and continue to service the Strobotuner product line, which is now made in China.
More recent years
In 1991 Dick Peterson's son Scott R. Peterson became Company President, after previously serving as Design Engineer, Production Manager, and Vice President.
In 1998, the Peterson Company celebrated its 50-year anniversary by creating the "Beer Bottle Organ" prototype in the exhibit area of the American Institute of Organ Builders convention. The "BBO" used pipe organ components and beer bottles with liquid, precisely tuned with a Peterson strobe tuner, to produce a clear, flute-like musical sound when played with a keyboard or via recorded MIDI files. Peterson Electro-Musical Products, Inc. is still family owned, and still has an active research and development program for tuner and pipe organ-equipment product lines.
Tuner product history
The first Peterson tuner, the Model 150, was released in 1952, after Peterson developed it for their own use in tuning organs. The Model 150, and the Model 200 released in 1959 were the first products to carry the Peterson name. These tuners used vacuum tube technology and produced a wide range of finely adjustable audio tones. The design advanced to solid state with the Model 300 in 1966.
First handheld tuner
Peterson engineer, Bill Hass (born February 6, 1939, died May 3, 2008), built the first commercially available battery-powered handheld tuner, the Model 70, in 1964. The Model 70 was a chromatic tuner that generated twelve fixed pitch reference tones. The user tuning an instrument set the tuner to a pitch and matched the tone.
First Peterson strobe tuner
In 1967, Peterson introduced its first strobe tuner, the Model 400. It was the first solid-state strobe tuner on the market, and did not require calibration. Musicians could select one-cent increments. The tuner was highly influential in Peterson Tuner's growing presence in the fledgling tuner industry.