A Brief History of the Conn Company (1874-present)*

by Margaret Downie Banks, Ph.D.
Senior Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
Vermillion, South Dakota

© Copyright 1997-2009 by The National Music Museum.
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*Excerpted and updated from Elkhart's Brass Roots: An Exhibition to Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of C. G. Conn's Birth and the 120th Anniversary of the Conn Company by Margaret Downie Banks (Vermillion, South Dakota: The Shrine to Music Museum, 1994).

Experimental Laboratory (1928-1940)

C. G. Conn Ltd.'s Experimental Laboratory, established in 1928, was unique among band instrument manufacturing companies and enabled C. G. Conn Ltd. to out-distance its competitors in the scientific development of musical instruments. Led by Carl Greenleaf's son, Leland Burleigh Greenleaf (1904-1978), and Chief Research Engineer, Allen Loomis (1877-1948), the engineers in this department had, by 1940, developed the wireless and rimless Vocabell (1932), the first successful short action valves (1934), the first device for the visual measurement of sound—the Stroboconn (1936)—and the first electrolytically formed, one-piece seamless bell, later known as the Coprion bell (1938).

One of the most famous devices developed by Conn's Experimental Laboratory was the Stroboconn (1936), a chromatic stroboscope built to measure musical pitch. From the Conn Archive at the National Music Museum.   © 1997-2009 by The National Music Museum.

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