11 Facts About Georges Jenny

Georges Marcel Charles Jenny was a French musician, poet, and electronic instrument builder.

Georges Jenny's best-known invention was an electronic keyboard instrument called the Ondioline.

The Martenot was used in serious music, but Georges Jenny planned the Ondioline for a broader consumer market, including pop music.

Georges Jenny began constructing his first prototype around 1939 while recovering from tuberculosis at a sanatorium in the south of France.

In 1948 Georges Jenny demonstrated the instrument in a German newsreel.

Georges Jenny determined that the raw waveform resultant from the super heterodyne technique was not as harmonically rich a starting point as desirable, and this led him to design the Ondioline's cathodic coupling oscillator, for which he received his first patent.

For decades Georges Jenny redesigned and manufactured new versions of the instrument at his Paris company, Les Ondes Sonores Georges Jenny.

Georges Jenny was diagnosed with poliomyelitis in 1953 and doctors believed he would not walk again.

Georges Jenny was forced to rest, but he could use his mind and his hands to invent.

Georges Jenny was so impressed with Perrey's proficiency and dexterity, he offered him a job as a salesman and product demonstrator.

Perrey procured so many orders for Ondiolines during the 1950s that Georges Jenny finally had to open a factory, Les Ondes Sonores Georges Jenny, in Paris.