Benjamin Miessner

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Benjamin Franklin Miessner (July 27, 1890 – March 25, 1976) was an American radio engineer and inventor. He is best known for electronic musical instruments, such as the electronic organ and electronic piano, and for inventing the cat’s whisker detector used in early crystal radios.

Miessner was born in Huntingburg, Indiana. He finished high school in 1908 and joined the U.S. Navy, graduating from the Naval Electrical School in 1909. In Washington, D.C., he worked as a radio operator and invented the cat whisker detector. He rose to Chief Operator before leaving the Navy in 1911 to work on wireless control systems for torpedoes and to help develop a superheterodyne radio.

He studied electrical engineering at Purdue University from 1913 to 1916. In 1916 he married Eleanor M. Schulz, and they had two daughters. That same year he returned to the Navy as an Expert Radio Aid for Aviation and wrote Radiodynamics, a book on wireless control. During World War I he led the Navy’s radio lab at Pensacola.

After the war he worked in New York on aircraft radios and transoceanic receivers, then moved to Chicago to found an acoustical lab. In 1926 he became chief engineer at Garod Corp in New Jersey. In the late 1920s he sold more than 50 patents to RCA, earning about $750,000, and started Miessner Inventions, Inc. in Millburn, New Jersey.

For about 30 years he led innovations in electrical radios, electronic musical instruments, and sound recording, helping to perfect the Wurlitzer organ and the electronic piano. He published All-electric Radio Receiver Design (1929) and wrote on electronic music for the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers (1936). He and his brother Otto worked on the rhythmicon, though Léon Theremin had a similar instrument.

One of his patents was used by Everett Piano Company in the Orgatron electronic organ (1934). In 1954 Wurlitzer based their electric piano on his 1935 design. In 1937 he designed an electric violin and cello, though he lost a copyright battle over the violin.

Miessner held over 200 patents, selling about 150. He remained active in writing and invention, and served on patent reform efforts. He received the De Forest Audion gold medal (1963) and the Distinguished Service Award from the Boys Club of America (1964). He died in Miami, Florida.