Images from the Cutler Gallery Glass Armonica, France, ca. 1785 NMM 6208.  Glass armonica, France, ca. 1785. Ex coll.: Wolfgang Ruf, Emmetten, Switzerland. Rawlins Fund, 1999. As the popularity of playing musical glasses increased during the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin, American statesman and inventor, designed a more utilitarian version of the fashionable instrument--the armonica. He had a glassblower make him a set of 36 hemispherical bowls, graduated in size, with a hole in the middle so that they could be placed in a row on a horizontal iron spindle and rotated by a treadle mechanism like that of old-fashioned sewing machines. The Museum's example, designed for use in an aristocratic household staffed by servants, is equipped with a crank rather than a treadle, to rotate the spindle. The player touches the glass rims with moistened fingers to create the instrument's distinctively ethereal, ringing sound. Most of the surviving glass armonicas were built in Germany or Bohemia during the first half of the 19th century. The Museum's armonica, shown here from the back, is one of the earliest examples, built in France about 1785.   Click arrow to continue Cutler Gallery Tour Go to Cutler Gallery Tour Index Go to Virtual Gallery Tour Index National Music Museum The University of South Dakota 414 East Clark Street Vermillion, SD 57069 ©National Music Museum, 2003-2015 Most recent update: September 19, 2015 The University of South Dakota Return to Top of Page