Benjamin Franklin's Glass Armonica

No, you didn't miss the "h"... there is no "h". It's Armonica, not Harmonica. Around 1750, Ben Franklin went to Europe and saw a musician playing music on glasses filled with water by rubbing his hands around the rims. That assembly was called a "glass harmonica". Ol' Ben got an idea. He contacted an American glassmaker, and had a set of glasses manufactured, each one a different diameter, and each with a hole in the bottom. He then strung the holes on a long pole using cork to hold them in place, and mounted the spindle horizontally and spun it using a treadle. See the photo below. He called his invention "the glass armonica". Although quite popular in the late 1700's, the musical instrument had disappeared by 1820. It was re-discovered in the 1930's and a few were actually constructed. There are only a dozen or so players around the world today. At Colonial Williamsburg today, we saw a professional musician Dean Shostak playing one. He plays numerous instruments including the violin. He also plays a set of musical glasses mounted on a piano sounding board, a set of glass handbells, glass rods, and other glass instruments. He calls himself a glass musician. A prominent Japanses glass company found out about his "glass musician" status as well as his violin ability, and manufactured for him a glass violin. Shostak also played the Baschet. (See the Wikipedia entry on the French Baschet Brothers for another picture of the Baschet! Talk about an unusual sound! The concert was only 7 bucks, but it was worth several times that. The music was great! The Armonica sounds heavenly, and this fellow was a master musician on it. The chords, harmony, resonance, timbre, and tonal depth were indescribably pretty. He played everything from Fur Elise to Danny Boy, from Amazing Grace to America the Beautiful. He also played several pieces written just for the Armonica by Mozart, Carl Philip Emanual Bach, Richard Strauss, and even Beethoven!