It is the successor to W.W. Kimball and Company, the world's largest piano and organ manufacturer at certain times in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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

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

Kimball hired veterans from Steinway & Sons and C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, and these men initiated improvements to the piano line.

By 1893 at the World's 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 35–40 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 Kimball's streamlined modern efficiency which greatly threatened their sales.

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

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

After the war, piano production resumed but a series of poor financial decisions by W.W. Kimball Jr led the company into decline.

[5] Jasper Corporation prospered from increasing television sales and from its investment in vertical integration, giving the company self-sufficiency.

[4] However, Kimball produced inexpensive console pianos, between upright and spinet size, in a subsidiary plant across the Texas–Mexico border in Reynosa, doing business as Kimco.

[5] Company leaders realized that the Kimball brand had far greater popular recognition than the Jasper brand,[4] and in 1974, Jasper changed its name to Kimball International, going public in September 1976 with the initial public offering of 500,000 shares of common stock.

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

Kimball expanded its product range to include casegoods[clarification needed], seating, filing and tables.