Reisner Relays, Magnets, and Organ Components

No. Reisner is a component supplier of record, and a supplier’s name inside an instrument points to the supply chain, not to the shop that built the organ. The Pipe Organ Database classifies the Hagerstown firm as an Organ Supplier rather than as a builder, and the documented cases fit that role. The United States Pipe Organ Company of Crum Lynne, Pennsylvania, fabricated most of the wooden parts of its own instruments, including consoles, windchests, regulators and tremulants, while buying pipes from Durst and switches from Reisner. An organ from that shop carries Reisner switches and Durst pipes without either firm having built it. The same logic applies to any instrument: the mark tells you who supplied the part, and the builder has to be established from other evidence. That is one named case rather than a survey, but it shows the pattern a supplier mark follows.

A Reisner mark is weak dating evidence because the same component patterns were supplied for decades. Organ Supply Industries dates its own supply to the trade to 1924, and a component matching a long-running supply pattern may have entered an instrument in any year of that pattern’s production. The company describes the Reisner chest magnet as having been the standard of the industry for over seventy-five years, so a magnet of that pattern narrows the date very little by itself. Only a distinguishing feature, such as a datable coil, lead insulation or body marking, would narrow it further, and no published Reisner date-code key is known. A magnet can also be a later replacement. In the documented restoration of Skinner Opus 1257, Reisner electro-magnets were installed as replacement components from the general organ-supply trade, so a Reisner part inside an instrument by another builder may record a restoration rather than the original build.

Organ Supply Industries acquired the W. H. Reisner Manufacturing Company in 1978, according to the prospectus timeline Organ Supply Industries publishes, which is why Reisner-branded magnets appear under the Organ Supply Industries name in the trade brochure current as of September 1, 2026. The same timeline states that W. H. Reisner, a jeweller by trade, formed the company in 1926 on the advice of M. P. Moller. The Pipe Organ Database gives a different starting point, recording the firm as active from 1902. The two records were compiled independently, and the prospectus timeline is a graphic whose pairing of years with events is not independently confirmed, so the founding date stands unsettled between the two rather than resolved to one. The prospectus also does not state whether Reisner-branded parts continue to be manufactured under the Reisner name.

Organ Supply Industries is the survivor of a chain of Erie, Pennsylvania, supply houses. As of September 1, 2026, the company describes itself as North America’s largest and most complete wholesale manufacturer and supplier of pipe-organ parts and materials, employee-owned and dating from 1924; the market-position statement is the company’s own description of itself.

Its prospectus timeline traces A. Gottfried Company, formed in 1894 from A. B. Felgemaker personnel, and Durst & Company, which joined the Erie suppliers in 1902 and merged with Organ Supply Corporation in 1933 to form Durst Organ Supply. The same timeline records the Maryland Chime Co. and J. C. Deagan acquired in 1958, personnel from National Organ Supply acquired in 1971, Organ Supply Corporation becoming Organ Supply Industries in 1972, and consolidation to one facility in 1991. A general reference describes the same firm as founded in 1924 as the Organ Supply Corporation and renamed in 1978, and adds the Erie Reed Pipe Company to the absorbed firms; the renaming year differs between the two accounts and is left as recorded.

The practical consequence for an owner is that many historic American supply-house names, Reisner among them, now resolve to one Erie firm, so the original maker of an older component often no longer exists as a separate business.

Reisner was in the organ relay business from 1915, when it filed for what became US Patent 1,204,469, an electromagnetic relay whose specification is written expressly around a pipe organ. In the patent’s arrangement the relay is connected in circuit with the pipe-controlling magnet, a stop switch and an organ key, which is the basic signal path of an electric action: key and stop switch on one side, the magnet at the chest on the other, and the relay carrying the result between them. A patent establishes a claimed design of its date. It does not establish that Reisner manufactured or sold relays commercially, or that any named builder bought them, so a Reisner relay found in an instrument is evidence from the part itself, not from the patent.

Reisner held organ patents in its own name for at least four decades: the 1915 relay, organ valves of 1929 and 1930, a direct electric valve action of 1936, magnetic valves of 1941 and 1943, and an electromagnetic actuator for organ valves whose original application was filed in 1947. Most of that portfolio concerns chest-side valves and magnets rather than console switching, which matches the components that carry the name today. Assignee indexing for patents issued before 1976 is incomplete, so the list shows the shape of the portfolio rather than its full extent, and none of it shows what Reisner actually sold or to whom.

The chest magnet is the component most likely to carry the Reisner name. Organ Supply Industries’ Reisner trade brochure states that for over three quarters of a century the Reisner chest magnet has been the standard of the industry. As of September 1, 2026, the company’s catalogue lists standard and C-17 chest magnets with precision-wound coils of 12 to 16 volts DC as standard, 24-volt DC coils available, die-cast bodies and six-inch stranded, tinned leads. That is a manufacturer’s description of its own product, not independent evidence of how many instruments contain it. Coil resistance is another mark the part itself carries: a dealer inventory of 2017 listed several hundred used Reisner chest magnets in 150-ohm and 125-ohm ratings.

The same brochure lists pedal pouch units PPA-1 to PPA-5, the 601 Direct Pallet Magnet and Direct Valve Action units. As of September 2, 2026, the brochure specifies the 601 Direct Pallet Magnet as operating on 10 to 15 volts DC with soft felt and leather valves cemented to an aluminum valve carrier, so a currently supplied direct-pallet magnet still seals with felt and leather rather than an all-metal or synthetic face. The Direct Valve Action, or DVA, is described as a self-contained electro-pneumatic note action using first-grade pneumatic leather pouches. Despite the name, the DVA is an electro-pneumatic unit, not a direct-electric action; that is a naming caution about this one supplier’s catalogue, not a statement about how the trade uses the phrase elsewhere. The brochure is undated, so only the access date is firm. How any of these units behaves inside a windchest, and what its condition means for service, is a windchest question rather than a supplier-mark question and is not covered here.

Reisner also supplied console and switching material as trade components. A dealer inventory dated 15 August 2017 listed a Reisner two-manual console in dark oak with roll top and 31 stop tabs, assorted Reisner switches, and a separate Reisner two-manual keyboard set, alongside Moller, Austin, Kilgen and Schantz material. A commercially interested listing with no maker dates or model numbers cannot date that supply or show what is available now, but it does establish that a Reisner name can appear on a complete console or a keyboard set and still identify a supplier rather than the builder. The United States Pipe Organ Company case above shows the same for switches.

Compact, floor-mounted Fotoplayer-style Robert Morton windchests used Reisner C-17 latchcap magnets mounted on top with the mechanism accessible from above, according to a private research site on the Robert Morton Organ Company last updated in 2019. The C-17 designation still appears in the Reisner brochure current as of September 1, 2026. The case illustrates the attribution problem exactly: a proprietary Reisner magnet inside a Robert Morton windchest is a bought-in component, so the magnet type alone should not be treated as diagnostic of the builder. The site’s underlying source for the part identification is not shown beyond its general citation practice, and a single physical feature should not be treated as uniquely diagnostic on its own.

The documented link between Reisner and M. P. Moller, both of Hagerstown, Maryland, is a patent-assignment relationship, not a supply relationship. A single application filed on 13 October 1928 by Henry Edward Burton of Hagerstown produced one patent assigned by mesne assignments to The W. H. Reisner Manufacturing Company, US 1,907,176, and a divisional patent assigned to M. P. Moller, Inc., US 1,912,253. Burton is also the named inventor on US 1,898,240, assigned to Moller from an application he filed on 17 March 1931. All three patents concern chest-side valves, not console relays, switching or combination action. An inventor appearing on patents assigned to two firms is evidence of a personal or contractual connection between them, not of one firm buying components from the other.

The documentary record for the two firms contains no document establishing that M. P. Moller purchased console or chest components from Reisner, and none giving years for any such purchase. The prospectus statement that Moller advised the founding of the Reisner company and the Burton patent assignments are the strongest documentary evidence on the question, and neither is a purchase record. Dated factory records, purchase ledgers, Reisner catalogues and Moller shop orders would be the deciding evidence, and none of that material is digitized where it can be consulted. Silence in the surviving record is not proof that no purchase happened, but the practical rule is the same: a Reisner part inside a Moller organ is a Reisner part until a factory record says more. Unattributed online assertions of a close relationship between the two firms carry no weight against that.

Its published catalogue includes none. As of September 1, 2026, Organ Supply Industries’ product categories cover consoles and parts, windchests and actions, reservoirs, swell shades, wind conductors, electrical components, felt and leather, tracker parts, tools, blowers and chimes, pipes and theatre-organ parts, and include no control system, relay or combination action product. That boundary rests on the published top-level product categories rather than on the contents of every subcategory beneath them. The 1915 relay patent belongs to the historical record; the catalogue as of that date lists no relay product. In practice this is the line between a parts house and a control-system supplier: a chest magnet, a swell shade or a console shell comes from the former, while a relay system, capture system or keying system comes from a control-system manufacturer of the kind recorded on the Control-System Manufacturers hub. A Reisner name on a chest magnet therefore says nothing about which firm’s control system drives it.

Organ Supply Industries sells to the trade only. As of September 1, 2026, the company states that it is not a retail supplier, that it sells only to those engaged in organ building or maintenance on a full-time basis and not to private individuals or institutions, and that customer registration is required before purchasing. It describes organbuilders as its partners, stating ‘We are your partner—NOT your competitor!’, and lists specialty pipe manufacturing, custom design console and casework, and specialty chest design and replication among its offerings. For a church or other owner, this means a replacement Reisner magnet is ordered through a service firm rather than directly, and recording the supplier marks already inside the instrument is what lets that firm match the part.