Adolph Rickenbacker (April 1, 1887 – March 21, 1976) was a Swiss-American electrical engineer who co-founded the

Rickenbacker Rickenbacker International Corporation is a string instrument manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California. The company is credited as the first known maker of electric guitars – a steel guitar in 1932 – and today produces a range ...

guitar company along with

George Beauchamp George Delmetia Beauchamp (; March 18, 1899 – March 30, 1941) was an American inventor of musical instruments. He is known for designing the first electrically amplified stringed instrument to be marketed commercially. He was also a foun ...

and Paul Barth. Rickenbacker was born in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (B ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

as Adolf Rickenbacher. He immigrated in 1891 to the United States with older relatives after his parents died, settling in Columbus Ohio and later southern California. He Anglicized both his own name, and that of his company, to Rickenbacker to capitalize on the popularity of his distant cousin, America's top

flying ace A flying ace, fighter ace or air ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The exact number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an ace is varied, but is usually co ...

Eddie Rickenbacker Edward Vernon Rickenbacker or Eddie Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890 – July 23, 1973) was an American fighter pilot in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient.Hun The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...

out of his name." Eddie was already well known at the time, so the change received wide publicity. "From then on", as he wrote in his autobiography, "most Rickenbachers were practically forced to spell their name in the way I had..."Rickenbacker, Edward V., ''Rickenbacker: an Autobiography'', Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967, p. 115. Rickenbacker is credited with being one of the inventors of an electric guitar. In 1934 he, along with George Beauchamp, filed a patent application for an "electrical stringed musical instrument". They received the patent in 1937 and developed an electric guitar for the mass market. Adolph Rickenbacker died from cancer in

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, ...

in 1976 at the age of 88.

References

External links

Early history
of Rickenbacher/Electro String, from th
Rickenbacker
website 1880s births 1976 deaths People from Basel-Stadt American people of Swiss-German descent Businesspeople from Columbus, Ohio Writers from Columbus, Ohio Swiss emigrants to the United States American luthiers Deaths from cancer in California 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-music-bio-stub