Reminiscences of an Estey Employee

by Christopher W. Brown
Guilford, Vermont

Reprinted from Vol. XXIV, No. 4, Spring 2005 of the *ROS Quarterly*, journal of the Reed Organ Society, Inc., and used with permission of the editor. COPYRIGHTED with ALL OTHER RIGHTS RESERVED.

In July, 1955, I began work at Estey Organ Co. in the Electronics Lab. At that time, this was the unit that was formed by Harald Bode to develop his unique electronic organ. Working with him was John MacArthur, who was helping to work out the details of the U.S. patent as well as to do the technical development to get the organ in production. Among those in the lab were Bob Bartlett and Larry Toye, and I joined them in doing the trouble shooting and other work. Bob, John and I were all acquainted from our days in Marlboro College.

The Bode instrument had been developed in Germany, and was brought to Estey by Henry Hancock, who had taken over the management about 1953. The prototype instruments that had been exhibited were well received, and Estey began to produce them before all the bugs had been worked out. Furthermore, the production was mainly handwork, by a group of women hired to solder the many connections in the instrument. Thre first instruments had a multitude of defects. We spent many hours finding and fixing these problems. As we produced these instruments, there were improvements in the components which made the instruments more reliable as well as less expensive to manufacture.

After several months, I was sent to the machine shop to be an inspector because there were some problems with the key switches. These consisted of "fingers" lined up vertically under each key. I think there were seven or eight of these fingers made of phosphor bronze with a thin palladium wire welded to the end where connection was made with a horizontal "bus bar" that connected to the stop switch. The phosphor bronze finger was stamped out of a roll fed into a punch press which punched out the finger. My job as inspector was to monitor and find any defects as the fingers were produced. Later, I was put on various machines to help out as required.

It was at that machine shop that I got to know Charles H. "Tommy" Brockington, the shop foreman. He was a most interesting and delightful man who taught me a lot about machine shop work and did so in a quiet and tolerant manner. His wife, Mabel, also worked in the shop and she and Tommy were a devoted couple. The boss of the shop at the time was the late David K. Rocray, who was also a great and tolerant teacher, but a demanding leader.

After about a year, Tommy sent me over to the reed room and showed me how to operate the various machines that made the reeds. These were very ingenious machines and were the only ones of their kind in existence, as far as I know. Each machine performed a single function, such as planning the block, and they were very fussy and unpredictable machines on their best days. The most recalcitrant machine was the one which performed the final function, affixing the tongues to the blocks. Getting the tongues lined up on the blocks was the most difficult part, and I spent many hours adjusting this machine before it would do the job right.

Late in 1956 and into early 1957, Estey began to have serious financial difficulties. There had been a series of management changes, but the sales trends clearly indicated that the company was declining. I vividly remember the Friday when the paychecks could not be cashed because the New York bank had not deposited the funds with the Brattleboro Trust Company. That afternoon, Zee Persons stood in the bank lobby and personally approved checks for employees who would have otherwise had no money that day. Early the following week the funds came through, but it was a wake-up call for me, and I decided to use the G1 Bill to further my education. In the summer of 1957, I began to pursue my Master's degree at UVM and became yet another young person exported from Vermont.