History of the Electric Guitar Patent

The electric guitar was developed in the early 1900s and has become one of the most important instruments in contemporary music. Paul Tutmarc is rumored to have invented the first electrified guitar.

His design was inspired by the telephone, which used magnets to create sound vibrations. Tutmarc began building on a Hawaiian guitar, creating a magnetic pickup out of horseshoe magnets and wire coils that registered the vibration of a guitar’s strings. 

George Beauchamp and John Dopyera began experimenting with electromagnetic pickups around the same time as Tutmarc. Soon after getting the pickup to work, Beauchamp had a craftsman make a guitar. The guitar was nicknamed the “frying pan” and is largely credited as being the first purpose built electric guitar.

Beauchamp took the prototype to Adolph Rickenbacker and they went on to form a company and produce the first mass manufactured electric guitars - called Rickenbackers. 

Soon after, the “Spanish-style” electric guitar was built. This style had some flaws - namely feedback and distortion due to the guitar design - that led Les Paul to design the solid body electric guitar in 1940.

Paul decided to mount the strings and pickup to a single block of wood - as opposed to previous hollow designs - to minimize body vibrations. Les Paul brought a prototype to Gibson in 1946, but Gibson was skeptical and passed on the innovative design. Leo Fender, however, understood the importance of the innovation and, in 1949, started selling the “Esquire.” A couple years later, Gibson finally produced his own solid-body guitar, called the “Les Paul.” 

In 1955, riding on the wave of interest in pickups and solid body guitars, Theodore McCarty of Kalamazoo, Michigan filed a patent for a bridge design. McCarty invented an adjustable bridge that could be changed according to different playing styles. McCarty’s patent, credited to Gibson, expired in 1972 as electric guitars continued to flourish.

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