Colored Glass Harmonica

I’ve always been a big fan of Benjamin Franklin. While he was not much of a musician, the inventor in him couldn’t help but want to more efficiently package the musical novelty of making sound from the rim of a semi filled crystal goblet with a wet finger. So, he proceeded to commission a glass blower to make a long cylinder of fluted glass ends which would be played horizontally instead of vertically (the bottom of the cylinder would run in water in order to be constantly wet to the finger. Given his stature at the time in America and as much if not more so in Europe, it was a sensation for awhile, and even great composers were obliged to write music for it.