HOPE-JONES, ROBERT

born Feb. 9, 1859, Hooton Grange, Cheshire, Eng. died Sept. 13, 1914, Rochester, N.Y., U.S. British-American organ builder who introduced several innovations into electric-organ construction and influenced organ development in the United States. A church organist as well as head electrician of the National Telephone Co., Hope-Jones established an organ-manufacturing business in 1889. He immigrated to the United States in 1903, and four years later, after working with the E.M. Skinner Co. of Boston, he founded the Hope-Jones Organ Co. (Tonawanda, N.Y.), which he sold in 1908 to the Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. Hope-Jones, in his organ-building innovations, entirely abandoned the chorus and mutation stops and relied instead upon diapasons of vast scale on heavy-pressure wind, with reeds to match, backed up by huge-scaled flutes, tiny-scaled string stops, and powerful stops of his own invention called diaphones.