The last Kimball grand piano was signed by every worker and company executive, and remains on display at Kimballs showroom in Jasper, Indiana. 3 The Bsendorfer piano brand continued unaffected, but was sold back to Austrian buyers in 2002. 2 Today edit On October 31, 2014 Kimball International announced the spin-off of Kimball Electronics resulting in a new furniture company.

Kimball International consists of three furniture brands: Kimball, National, and Kimball Hospitality.

It is the successor to W.W.

Kimball and Company, the worlds largest piano and organ manufacturer at certain times in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Kimball Pianos S Serial Numbers Can

Kimball pianos company history and serial numbers can be found on this page.

History 2 Today History edit Kimball Piano and Organ edit This division started as a piano dealership in Chicago in 1857 as W.W.

Kimball and Company by William Wallace Kimball (18281904).

In 1864, Kimball moved from its earliest location in the corner of a jewelry store to sales rooms in the Crosby Opera House where Kimball sold pianos made by East Coast piano makers Chickering and Sons, the J C Fischer Piano Company, Hallet Davis, F.C.

Lighte, Joseph P.

Hale, and the W.P.

Emerson Piano Company.

The Great Chicago Fire destroyed all of Kimballs commercial assets in 1871, but he continued selling from his home, and rebuilt his dealership business.

In 1877, W.W. Kimball began assembling its own reed organs, using actions made by the J.G.

Earhuff Company and cases made by contractors.

After three years, the company began offering organs made entirely in house.

In 1882, the Kimball company was incorporated, and an expansive factory was built to produce reed organs.

Soon, the factory was producing 15,000 organs a year; the worlds largest organ maker.

Kimball stopped making reed organs in 1922 after having produced 403,390 instruments.

In 1887, Kimball began building a five-story factory for making its own pianos, and the next year produced 500 instruments of indifferent quality.

Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, and these men initiated improvements to the piano line.

By 1893 at the Worlds Columbian Exposition, at which Kimball received the Worlds Columbian Exposition Award, Kimball was known for high quality, efficiency in manufacture, and aggressive sales practices using 3540 traveling salesmen to cover cities and remote areas.

Prominent East Coast piano makers snubbed the Chicago exposition because they feared Chicago favoritism, and because of philosophical differences between their reliance on traditional name brand faithfulness and Kimballs streamlined modern efficiency which greatly threatened their sales.

In 1890, Kimball hired Englishman Frederic W.

Hedgeland, trained at his familys organworks in London: W.M.

Hedgeland. Hedgeland supervised a portable pipe organ design about the size of a large upright piano.

The pipe organ division of Kimball also built large, permanent pipe organs, including one for the Mormon Tabernacle in 1901.

When the pipe organ division was closed down in 1942, some 7,326 models had been built.

Kimball was involved in making player pianos, the first effort being an automatic mechanism in 1901.

As well, from 1915 to 1925, Kimball produced a popular line of phonographs.

During World War II, Kimball produced aircraft parts for major military airplane manufacturers such as Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed.

Kimball Pianos S Series Of Poor

After the war, piano production resumed but a series of poor financial decisions by W.W.

Kimball Jr led the company into decline.

In the mid-1950s, Kimball built a luxurious new factory in the Chicago suburb of Melrose Park, Illinois, but the factorys high costs, its poor performance, and flagging sales brought the company into grave financial crisis.

Kimball had slipped from being the worlds largest piano maker to the seventh largest, and it was nearly insolvent.

In 1959, the W.W.

Kimball Company was purchased from the last remaining Kimball family heir by Mr.

Arnold F. Habig, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of The Jasper Corporation which began operations in 1950 and founded by Mr.

Arnold F. Habig. The combined company was later renamed Kimball International.

Piano production was relocated to the small, southern Indiana town of West Baden, Indiana, where the company was rejuvenated and once again began to grow.

Ten years after the purchase, Kimball was once again the worlds largest piano company.

Jasper Corporation to Kimball International edit The Jasper Corporation was founded in 1950 in Jasper, Indiana, to make television cabinets, kitchen cabinets, and office furniture.

Jasper prospered from expanding television sales and from its investment in vertical integration, giving the company self-sufficiency.

In 1959, Jasper, Inc., purchased the W.

W. Kimball Company as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Jasper moved its Kimball piano manufacturing to West Baden Springs in 1961; some 26 miles (42 km) northeast of the town of Jasper.

The first Indiana-made pianos were plagued with quality problems, but the issues were addressed and the pianos improved.

In 1966, Jasper bought the prestigious Austrian piano maker Bsendorfer.

By 1969, Kimball had returned to its former position as the worlds largest piano maker.

The subsidiary made some 100,000 pianos and organs annually during its peak years in the 1960s and 1970s.

An average day saw 250 pianos and 150 electronic organs shipped from the factory.

Grand pianos from Kimball in Indiana ranged from compact 4-foot-5-inch (135 cm) models to larger 6-foot-7-inch (201 cm) models.

In Vienna, the Bsendorfer division made concert grand pianos as large as 9 feet 6 inches (290 cm): the Imperial Bsendorfer.

In a section devoted to the Hollywood musical with George Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue as the main theme, the 84 baby grands were rolled out under the arches of the L.A.

Memorial Coliseum.

Because of a worldwide decline in piano and organ purchases through the 1980s and 1990s, the Kimball piano and organ subsidiary was discontinued in February 1996.

The Bsendorfer piano brand continued unaffected, but was sold back to Austrian buyers in 2002.

Today edit On October 31, 2014 Kimball International announced the spin-off of Kimball Electronics resulting in a new furniture company.

Kimball Pianos Serial Numbers