Benjamin Franklin Invention

The Glass Harmonica -- It once drove women wild; author of new book to visit ...

PORTSMOUTH — Long before Elvis, another kind of pop music swept the country. The glass harmonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin, caused young ladies to swoon, was used by Franz Mesmer to mesmerize his patients, and faded into oblivion as suddenly as it appeared. A modern-day reproduction of the glass harmonica will be in Portsmouth July 8 and 9 at two free events.

The instrument's strange history inspired a novel by a former Showcase editor, Dorothee Kocks, The Glass Harmonica, A sensualist's tale. Kocks will be joined by Alisa Nakashian-Holsberg, one of only about a dozen glass harmonica performers in the world today. They will be at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, which figures in the novel, on Friday July 8, and at RiverRun bookstore from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 9 during Summer in the Street. Calling it his favorite invention and spelling it 'armonica' after the Italian word for harmony, Franklin took the idea of wet fingers around a wine glass and multiplied it. Franklin nested 37 glass bowls — from salad-bowl size to small cup — on an axle. He separated the bowls with bits of cork, and used a foot treadle to turn the axle. Then players dipped their fingers in water and touched the spinning bowls. One poet at the time called the experience as "celestial ravishment," and ravishment was tricky in those days as it is today.

"The glass harmonica's heyday was during America's first sexual revolution, when some estimates say one in three New England brides showed up pregnant on her wedding day," says Kocks, who left Foster's Daily Democrat to earn a PhD in American Studies at Brown University. "Music and revolutions of an intimate kind have a way of going together. It may be that one reason the glass harmonica has been forgotten is because it was America's sexiest instrument, and we don't usually think of our forebears in that way."

Glass makers created an estimated five thousand instruments from the 1760s to its virtual disappearance in the 1830s. During that time a German town banned it for being too potent, Mozart wrote for it, and doctors hospitalized some women who played it for hysteria. The novel recreates a scene from the catacombs in Paris, where a scientist combines 'ghosts' of light (summoned by early motion-picture technology) with the eerie glass sounds of the harmonica to produce the equivalent of a really scary movie.

“I'm a patriotic kind of guy…” | Daily Republic

“I’m a patriotic kind of guy…”

I love the Fourth of July. I like my fireworks big, my Budweiser cold, and my Yankee Doodle dandy. Indeed, I like it very dandy, and I’m really not even sure what that means. However, I do know that I love the Fourth of July, and this Monday is Independence Day.  It’s interesting as to how our great country got to where it is today. There were many great patriots during the Revolutionary War.

About a month ago, Sarah Palin (former Governor of Alaska) explained the story of how a patriot named Paul Revere rang the bell in Boston’s Old North Church in order to warn the British. The way I learned it, Paul Revere never rang a bell. He lit lamps in order to warn our patriots, not the British. I think she made an honest mistake though. She probably got her information off of the internet (an invention of Benjamin Franklin). There’s a lot of bad information in cyberspace. I spent a few moments looking up some things and I was really surprised at what I found.

For instance, I’m sure everyone has heard of the Boston Tea Party, right? It was one in a series of huge events that led to our war with England. I’m sure you learned that several patriots, including Samuel Adams, dressed as Native Americans, boarded English sailing ships, and dumped barrels of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest the outrageous taxes on the colonies.

But, with a little internet searching, I discovered that the Boston Tea Party was nothing more than a “flash mob” gone horribly awry. When an impromptu dance broke out, someone accidentally knocked over a barrel and things got quickly out of hand. This is hypothetically factual, or so I read.  Did you know that the Bill of Rights was originally called the William of Rights? Did you know that the Declaration of Independence was originally written in a “wing-ding” font, in case it was stolen by a spy? Did you know that the automatic cat polisher was invented by Benjamin Franklin? Probably not, but these are all purportedly true… or not.

Theoretically accurate as well, is that Francis Scott Key originally wrote the Star Spangled Banner as a jingle for a deodorant advertisement. And there is the undisputed supposition that sometimes Nathan Hale wore a hat, and sometimes he did not wear a hat.  And every history teacher in America can tell you all about the Constitution, but only three out of seventeen teachers know that taking your morning constitutional is also a Constitutional right, and hopefully you won’t have any amendments. Again, I’m really not even sure what that means, but I got it from the internet.  The Treaty of Paris was initially called “The thing with the junk, and stuff”, by Benjamin Franklin, who was obviously drunk at the time from drinking too much alcohol (evidently a Benjamin Franklin invention).

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