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The agreements signed in May of 1969 covered many complex aspects of the joint venture between the two companies, Allen Organ and Rockwell. The details would probably make an excellent case study for law students, but the actual specifics of the documents are beyond the scope of this text. However, it's easy to understand the general idea behind the joint venture. The common element between the two companies was the "digital organ," something that only existed in the roughest concept in early 1969. The "digital" part was Rockwell's forte. The "organ" part was to be Allen's. It was a classic synergism. Neither company acting alone could create the world's first, commercially viable, digital musical instrument, but both companies acting cooperatively had a good chance of succeeding.
Although a team of engineers had been assembled at Rockwell to work on the project, all technical matters were handled through Ralph Deutsch. I knew that Deutsch wanted to guarantee himself a role in the project. In fact, he had asked me privately to request a clause in the agreements requiring Rockwell to keep him prominently on the project. Such a clause was indeed added to the agreements. On the surface it seemed harmless, even to our advantage, to have Deutsch continue on as a central figure in the project. At that time, I thought of Deutsch as a scientist who, quite understandably, wanted to be a part of what promised to be a remarkable technical achievement.
To be perfectly frank, I was still somewhat in awe of Ralph Deutsch. I might compare my dealing with Deutsch to dealing with a highly skilled surgeon. The surgeon is privy to knowledge beyond most people's comprehension; therefore, I believe it's fair to say most people would be somewhat in awe of such a surgeon — especially if such a surgeon were prone to "explain" things using the specialized language of medicine. I believe it's also fair to say that most people would reasonably place their trust in such a specialist rather than try to become personally proficient in the specialty. Such was the case at that time with my dealings with Ralph Deutsch.
I was told by Deutsch that various engineers at Rockwell had already been working on the digital organ project before the agreements were signed, but it wasn't until after the official signing that I was able to get a first-hand feel for the actual "modus operandi" back in Anaheim. Although Deutsch was always in the limelight, I noticed that he often had to consult another engineer, Dr. George Watson, when it came to certain details. In my opinion, Dr. Watson was the antithesis of Deutsch in personality. Although both men were highly trained specialists, Watson was always the quintessence of tasteful modesty who worked diligently in the background while Deutsch, having no "handicap" of humility, honed a fine skill at dashing to the foreground. I'll have more to say in a following chapter about George Watson, an unsung hero of modern electronic musical instrument design. Additional Rockwell engineers who were visible to me were Glen Griffith and Sam Muryama.
The digital organ project was divided into two stages. The first stage was the development of an engineering model which was used to "prove out," in actual hardware, the many new concepts which had to be devised to make the digital organ a practical reality. The engineering model was built using standard digital parts. The ultimate goal, of course, was to create a commercially viable digital organ using Rockwell's custom-designed, MOS/LSI (Metal-Oxide Semiconductor/Large-Scale Integrated) circuit devices. This was to be the second stage of the project — the designing and building of the actual production prototype of the digital organ.
In accordance with the contracts, we shipped Rockwell two stripped-down organs including console, keys, stops, and audio system. The Rockwell engineers labored through the summer breaking new ground in developing a brand-new electronic organ design methodology and incorporating it into the engineering model. From my vantage point, things seemed to be going well with the joint venture. I recall visiting California with my wife and son, Steven, in July of 1969, with a stop in Anaheim. Our treatment by everyone at Rockwell was most gracious. We were even invited to Deutsch's home in Sherman Oaks and had a pleasant visit.
Work steadily continued on the engineering model until finally, in September 1969, I received a call from Deutsch proclaiming triumph. He said that they had solved the last design problem and after they did some minor cleanup work the engineering model would be ready for me to check out the following month. So, in October, I was again off to California, very excited about the prospect of reaching this critical milestone.
Upon arrival in Anaheim, I began to study the ins and outs of this brand-new machine — the engineering model of the digital organ. I had to go mainly on instinct because I certainly didn't understand this new technology. All my experience was in analog electronics; now here I was facing a radically different digital world. My viewpoint was from the old school with rules I understood, but the new technology had its own set of rules which I had to explore before I could understand. It was like being dropped into a strange, foreign country with unfamiliar customs. Does a head shaking up and down mean "yes" or does it perhaps mean "no"? Even in this kind of situation, I believe it was reasonable to expect that a trustful give-and-take process would take place between the individuals of each culture until a mutual understanding was reached.
To me, the engineering model was the vehicle for fostering such a trustful give-and-take process between the Anaheim and Macungie people. To me, it was self-evident that the engineering model was not the final goal. It was a research and exploratory vehicle — a vehicle for learning — and a means to the ultimate goal of manufacturing better organs. This is how I approached the engineering model and that particular visit to Anaheim. I might add that after a year of working with Deutsch I hadn't the slightest reason to believe that he didn't feel the same way about the need for trustful give-and-take.
Deutsch went over the essential aspects of the engineering model for me. He showed me the alterable-voice card reader which was provided to facilitate my evaluation and selection of voices for the production prototype. The card reader was a quick way to load a trial waveshape (tone) into the waveshape memory of the engineering model and listen to it. After a waveshape was accepted, the pattern on the card was to be transferred into a pattern of diodes on a diode-matrix board which served as the waveshape memory. Remember, this was long before EPROMs (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memories) — those amazing little devices that are so familiar to computer buffs in today's world.
Our conversation eventually turned to the production prototype — the hardware that we would actually be using to build production organs. At that point Deutsch dropped the bomb! He "informed" me that the expression system in the production prototype would have to be modified from the one specified in the contracts. I told him that, from an organ designer's point of view, the proposed modification would result in a major deficiency in the organ. Deutsch protested that it was no big deal. I was taken aback at Deutsch's brusque dismissal of my genuine concern. I felt that this was an "organ" matter, clearly an issue best judged by the "organ" half of the partnership, Allen Organ Company. Swallowing my pride a bit, I suggested that we should get someone from Allen other than me to judge the situation from the organist's point of view. Deutsch agreed. I called Dayton Johnson, my assistant, back in Allentown and requested that he come out to California on short notice to help resolve an important issue. He assured me that he'd be there the following day — a Saturday as I recall — and did, in fact, arrive on the scene the next day.
After listening to Deutsch's description of the new expression arrangement, Dayton was as horrified as I expected. The new arrangement eliminated the separate expression of the Swell division of the organ as was specified in the contracts. As any church organist knows, the Swell division is supposed to be separately expressed. In fact, the word "Swell" is used to name the division because the organist is supposed to be able to separately make that division "swell" or enlarge in sound amplitude by depressing a pedal called the "Swell expression pedal." Eliminating this feature was certainly going to be a problem for us, a fact which Dayton eloquently explained to Deutsch.
Deutsch's response to this technical issue was as troubling to me as the issue itself. The cordial, accommodating, smooth-talking Deutsch seemed to dissolve before my eyes. I was now facing a Deutsch who appeared to me to be on the verge of nervous collapse. He acted as though he had been personally violated in some way. I did not understand his behavior; it was disturbing to me. As I mentioned before, I was still somewhat in awe of Deutsch. Until now, the technical jargon had flowed ever so confidently from his mouth that I had been lulled into a sense of security about the eventual success of the project. Now he appeared to me as being rather emotionally distraught. Imagine that you are about to have surgery and you see that your surgeon has suddenly lost his composure. I believe your feelings in that situation would be similar to the feelings I experienced at that time as I watched Deutsch dissolve.
It was not until sixteen years later that I received some insight into the reason for Deutsch's puzzling behavior. In October, 1985, James Southard testified, in a litigation proceeding, as follows regarding Deutsch's visit to Southard's company, Conn, in September of 1968: "I think that he said something to the effect that if he didn't sell this thing, he may be walking the street, or something to that effect." As I understand Southard's testimony, it meant that Deutsch's job was on the line depending on how financially successful the organ project would be for Rockwell. I didn't realize at the time how much pressure he must have been under.
Fortunately, William Sauers, the Rockwell executive assigned to the joint venture at the time, took charge and ushered us into the privacy of his office. I took some time to gather my thoughts as Deutsch appeared to be on the verge of a breakdown.
I was fascinated by the card reader which Rockwell provided as a laboratory aid in coming up with voicing waveshapes to be stored in the final organ. What if we could offer a card reader as a sales feature on the final organ? It seemed to me that such a feature would definitely add to the viability of the organ in the marketplace. It would help to counteract the negatives we would face in the market with the "less-than-ideal" expression arrangement. So, with this in mind, I offered to back off on the expression issue if Rockwell would incorporate the card reader and some other minor items into the final organ. After some study, Rockwell agreed to my proposals — for a price.
Because of the additional circuit complexity, we would have to purchase two additional MOS/LSI devices for the organs equipped with the card reader. I agreed to do this and left Anaheim having weathered the first storm.
By the end of the year, more voices were added to the engineering model and Dayton Johnson again went to Anaheim for more listening tests. At this point, he encountered one of those rules about the new digital technology which we didn't anticipate because of our "old school" analog perspective. This involved tuning accuracy. Of course, we didn't comprehend the reason for the out-of-tuneness then. All Dayton could say for sure was that the engineering model had a tuning problem. Obviously, something had to be done to correct the problem.
I explained our problem to Deutsch, who was again unsympathetic to our "organ" problem. In a letter to me, dated January 9, 1970, Deutsch spelled out in cold, calculated terms what he portrayed as "Rockwell's" position on the matter. The gist of the letter, as I read it, was something like this — tough luck, guys! Our measurements prove that we met the contractual requirements with respect to frequency, and if you now want something else, it's going to cost you! Have a nice day.
He also made it clear that the engineering model would remain in Rockwell's possession until Allen came up with a "plan of action." It just so happened that I had been asking that we bring the engineering model to Allentown so I could get on with the voicing studies. It was important to me to get on with the voicing studies so we would be able to develop viable production models. So, Deutsch's withholding of the engineering model from us was especially irksome. His behavior when facing technical problems reminded me more of the playground than the business world.
We agreed to a price increase for the MOS/LSI devices in order to improve the frequency accuracy and I finally received the engineering model in Allentown for my voicing work. The voicing procedure consisted of punching harmonic amplitude data onto an IBM card and running a computer program which converted the harmonic data into a corresponding waveshape. The waveshape data was then punched onto another IBM card which, when inserted into the card reader of the engineering model, allowed me to play the waveshape as a stop on an organ. Recordings of pipes served as a guide in arranging the harmonics to create different voices. The variations seemed endless; I never had so much control over voicing.
Interestingly, we didn't have a computer to run the voicing program. However, General Acceptance Corporation in Allentown graciously allowed us to rent time on their IBM/360. In those days it took a day to turn around one voice test, but the excitement of exploring a brand-new technology took the edge off my impatience. I gradually homed in on an acceptable set of voices which we programmed onto the diode matrix boards in order to test the complete organ specification. This information was sent to Rockwell for entering into the MOS/LSI read-only memories to be used in the final MOS/LSI version of the digital organ.
Back in Anaheim, work continued on the design of thirteen custom MOS/LSI devices. The final MOS/LSI version of the digital organ, the production prototype, contained 22 of these devices, some being used in multiples. All 22 MOS/LSI devices were mounted on a single, printed-circuit board which formed the tone generator of the organ. The relatively small size and neat appearance of the "MOS Board" veiled the true complexity of the electronic circuitry lying within the MOS/LSI devices. About 48,000 transistors were contained on that single, tone-generator board — a phenomenal accomplishment in 1970.
Toward the end of 1970, the completion of the MOS/LSI production prototype organ was drawing near. The plan was for Rockwell to deliver two production prototypes to Allen for checkout and official acceptance. Everything was going fairly smoothly at this point and my thoughts were turning towards manufacturing and marketing concerns. These were major concerns, I might add, considering the revolutionary nature of the new technology and all the reorientation it would necessitate both in the Company and with our dealers. My planning had aimed the new technology at mid-sized organs, a realistically challenging goal in my view. In short, we would have our hands full but everything seemed to be in place.
However, in November, Deutsch and two Rockwell executives came to Macungie with a whole new proposal. They wanted to expand our relationship to include the development of a "small organ." I wasn't very enthusiastic. The production prototypes relating to the contracts of May 1969 were not even delivered for acceptance yet. Moreover, we had already incurred huge financial obligations in relation to those contracts. Accordingly, we were reluctant to commit to such an expansion of the project at that time.
Although all three of the men from Rockwell tried to sell me on the idea of expanding the project, Deutsch was, by far, the most adamant and aggressive in his tactics. He seemed quite frustrated that he couldn't force me to cave in and accept his new plan. I neither knew what was going on behind the scenes at that time nor did I know just how deeply my rejection of Deutsch's "small organ" proposal irritated him. Nor could I imagine how significantly the rejection would affect our future relationship. Events, which would occur much later, ultimately opened my eyes to many things that were hidden from my view in that time frame. These revelations, the "story behind the story," will be of interest not only to those involved with the electronic musical instrument industry but also to students of business in general. However, to maintain historical continuity, I'll go into that later.
Finally, towards the end of December 1970, delivering the final pieces of the two production prototypes, Deutsch and two Rockwell engineers brought two completed "MOS Boards" to Macungie. After a time, they had the boards working in one of the two organs we had prepared to receive the "MOS Boards." There were some last-minute glitches, but the moment had come for us to formally accept that amazing product of so many man-years of effort, the world's first digital electronic musical instrument to be placed into production. By January 1971, I formally accepted the production prototypes, and turned over to Rockwell the money and Allen Organ securities representing the financial obligations as specified in the contracts of May 1969. With this momentous event behind me, my thoughts quickly returned to manufacturing and marketing.