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The electrification of musical instruments is almost certainly the most significant organological innovation of the last 100 years.1 While the first commercially successful electric guitar, the Rickenbacker/Electro String 'Frying Pan', was developed in 1931,2 the application of electricity to strings goes back much further than is generally appreciated. In 1890, a United States Naval Officer named George Breed patented a design for an electrified guitar which, although not the very first example of an electrified instrument,3 appears to be the first application of electricity to a fretted string instrument.
Like the modern electric guitar, Breed's patent was based on a vibrating string in an electromagnetic field. However, Breed's design worked on very different electrical and musical principles, resulting in a guitar with an unconventional playing technique that produced an exceptionally unusual and un-guitarlike continuously sustained sound. Breed is now almost completely unknown as an instrument maker/designer; the significance of this instrument has remained underappreciated, and the circuitry unexamined. This article outlines Breed's instrument-making career, examines his 1890 patent, considers the issues and idiosyncrasies of Breed's design and explores possible reasons why it was never brought to market.
GEORGE BREED
George Breed was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 19 July 1864. He came from a well off and locally prominent family; his grandfather, also named George Breed, had a successful glass and china importing business in Pittsburgh, and was one of the founders of Western Pennsylvania Hospital. Invention seems to have run in the family; Breed's father Richard Breed (George the elder's son) had at least two patents to his name.4
Prior to the granting of his 1890 patent, Breed's career was in the US Navy. On 17 June 1882 Breed entered the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland as a Cadet Midshipman, graduating from there on 10 June 1886.5 During the 1880s, the US Navy was undergoing a process of modernisation, changing from an organisation of 'wooden ships and iron men'6 to a modern, technologically-based fighting force. This development was paralleled by changes at the Academy as well; for example, Breed's incoming cohort of 1882 was the first to have all student officers officially designated as naval cadets-the Academy having previously made a distinction between cadet engineers and naval cadets-with all cadets now receiving...