Glass harmonica

Ralph Archibald portraying Benjamin Franklin at a Glass Music Festival in Philadelphia in 1999

Ancient Persians, the Chinese and Japanese all experimented with rudimentary instruments formed by filling drinking glasses with water and striking them with sticks. An Irishman, Richard Puckeridge, began to rub glass rims with his fingers in 1743. Franklin modified that idea. Instead of filling glasses with water, he used blown glasses of different diameters, each corresponding with different notes. By fitting bowls into one another with a horizontal rod and rotating them by a pedal, he increased the complexity of the chords. > More