Gulbransen piano

Company Information

1904

Gulbransen, Inc. founded in Chicago, Illinois by Axel Gulbransen.

1917

Gulbransen, Inc. grows to be the world's largest manufacturer of player pianos.

1928

Gulbransen produces its first organ (reed pump organ).

1942

Steinway and Gulbransen selected as the only two manufacturers of pianos for government use during World War II.

1957

Gulbransen introduces the world's first all transistor organ.

1962-72

Gulbransen leads the high-tech home organ industry with many firsts: first electronic theater organ, first built-in automatic rhythm, first realistic piano voice in an organ, first instant playback, first automatic-walking bass plus many others.

1973

Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) purchases Gulbransen, Steinway and Sons, Rodgers Organs, Gemeinhardt Flute, Lyon and Healy Harp, Fender Rhodes and others to form the world's most prestigious musical instrument company.

1986

Gulbransen acquired from CBS by a California music company. Gulbransen continues the effort started at CBS to create high quality wave synthesis of instrumental sounds with enough oscillators to be used on organs where many different instruments must be available simultaneously.

1987

Gulbransen produces its first wave synthesis ASICs and enters the technology business selling complete designs of digital pianos to manufacturers in Asia.

1988

Digital pianos using Gulbransen technology take over more than 50% of the market in Korea. Gulbransen patents an optical sensor strip which detects velocity of piano keys for use with MIDI devices. Elton John, Billy Joel and others choose the Gulbransen MIDISystem for use in their acoustic pianos.

1992

Gulbransen re-spins its ASICs increasing the output accuracy to 20 bits and installs 18 bit DACs to eliminate all vestiges of background hiss.

1994

Gulbransen begins custom designs to penetrate the PC integrated circuit market with low-cost, high-quality wave synthesis, full custom chips, which are backward compatible with existing software. Additionally, Gulbransen introduces a high quality portable digital hymn player containing over 5,000 songs for the church market.

1996

Gulbransen introduces the G392, the first PC sound chip with the capabilities to play 64 simultaneous voices through a hardware based synthesizer engine.

1997

World renowed keyboard manufacturer, Baldwin Pianos, selects the Gulbransen MIDISystem as the foundation component in launching its Concert Master piano line.

1998

Gulbransen sells the assets of its chip design division to National Semiconductor. � Gulbransen continues its musical instrument manufacturing business.� The company's highly regarded MIDISystems line and the Gulbransen Digital Hymnal remain defining, state-of-the-art, music products.

(The above is from the ", Gulbransen Web site", )

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