Aeolian-Skinner

Æolian-Skinner Organ Company, Inc. — Æolian-Skinner of Boston, Massachusetts was an important American builder of a large number of notable pipe organs from its inception as the Skinner Organ Company in 1901 until its closure in 1972. Key figures were Ernest M. Skinner (1866–1960), Arthur Hudson Marks (1875–1939), Joseph Silver Whiteford (1921-1978), and G. Donald Harrison (1889–1956). The company was formed from the merger of the Skinner Organ Company and the pipe organ division of the Æolian Company in 1932.

In 1902, Skinner entered into a partnership to form The Skinner & Cole Company.was formed in 1902 as a partnership of Ernest Skinner and Cole, another former Hutchings-Votey employee, By 1904 the partnership had dissolved, and the "Ernest M. Skinner & Company" purchased the Skinner and Cole assets, in the form of the contract for The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City from the former company for $1.

Between 1904 and 1910, the firm produced approximately 30 instruments during that 6-year period, including several new instruments of Skinner's design, in the 60 to 80 Stop size range.

By 1912 the firm had perfected the "Pitman Windchest," (A "Wind Chest" is the large box, normally built of wood, upon which the sound producing pipes are "planted," and which contains the valves and mechanisms which control the wind supply to the pipes) to a state of simple technical elegance. The Pitman chest allows the air to be held constantly pressurized, directly at the valves located beneath each of the thousands of pipes, which increases responsiveness to the player, and eliminating noise and other problems found with the "Ventil" style chests, which only apply wind only when a stop is drawn.

Virtually all major builders of electro-pneumatic action organs, including M. P. Möller, W. W. Kimball (both firms now defunct), Schantz, and Reuter use some form of the Pitman windchest to this day, although most have only recently begun to credit Skinner with the design and subsequent refinements that make it an industry benchmark.

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