Ernest Martin Skinner (January 15, 1866 – November 26/27, 1960) was an American pipe organ builder. His electro-pneumatic switching systems advanced the technology of organ building in the first part of the 20th century. Biography Skinner was born in Clarion, Pennsylvania, to touring concert singers Washington and Alice Skinner. His father organized a music company in Taunton, Massachusetts and sang in a quartet in Taunton's Unitarian Church. It was at this church that Skinner encountered his first organ. Skinner attended rehearsals, the performances of Gilbert and Sullivan, and operettas which stimulated his interest in music. He got a job as a bellows pumper at fifteen cents per hour in Taunton's Baptist church where he had his first experiences repairing and constructing organs. When he was a teenager, the family moved to West Somerville, Massachusetts, where he attended high school for six months. In his autobiography, he stated that the reason for leaving his schooling was his inability to understand Latin, but Dorothy Holden in her biography: "The Life and Work of Ernest M. Skinner" attributes it to the fact that the family fortune had declined and Skinner had to help support them. He became a "shop boy" for George H. Ryder, a small organ builder located in Reading, Massachusetts. After four years he was fired, which led to his employment at the shop of preeminent Boston organ builder George Hutchings, following Ryder's foreman, Horace Marden, and voicer, William H. Dolbeer. At Hutchings he worked first as a tuner, rising to the post of factory superintendent during his twelve years with the firm. In 1893 in Bethel, Maine, he married Bethel native Mabel Hastings. The 1897 Hutchings organ at the Basilica and Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston drew national attention and acclaim for Hutchings, though he did not mention his young factory superintendent, Ernest Skinner, by name. Skinner made the first of two public trips to England, crossing the Atlantic on a cattle steamer in 1898. Skinner was introduced to the work of Henry Willis, the London builder whose high-pressure chorus reeds and tuba 'organ stop' set the benchmark for much of the 20th century. Skinner was given access to the large Willis organ at St George's Hall, Liverpool, and met privately with Willis, who tutored him in voicing practices and techniques not yet known in the United States. Skinner then visited France where he met Louis