The Pickup
While multiple inventions tried to increase the volume sufficiently, none came close to getting the guitar where it needed to be - none until the use of electricity.
George D. Beauchamp, an inventor of the early 1900s, had the brilliant idea to create the pickup, a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet. The pickup created an electromagnetic field that turned vibrations of strings into an electric current.
Adolph Rickenbacker holding the new Frying Pan, the first electric guitar. Credit to the Smithsonian.
Beauchamp, working with the Electro String Instrument Corporation, released the Frying Pan, a basic lap-steel guitar shaped liked its namesake that featured Beauchamp's pickup, thus making it the first electric guitar. The Frying Pan broke through the sound barrier once holding the guitar back, allowing it to be heard.
"Nobody in the patent office believed that it would work as a musical instrument," - Gary Sturm, curator at the National Musuem of American History
George D. Beauchamp's patents for the Frying Pan guitar and the first electric pickup. Credit to Google Patents
