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 founder of

National Stringed Instrument Corporation The National String Instrument Corporation was an American guitar company first formed to manufacture banjos and then the original resonator guitars. National also produced resonator ukuleles and resonator mandolins. The company merged with Dobr ...

and

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 rang ...

(originally Rickenbacher) guitars.

Biography

He was born in Coleman County, Texas on March 18, 1899. Beauchamp performed in

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

, playing the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

and the lap steel guitar, before he settled in Los Angeles, California. During the 1920s, he experimented with the creation of electric lap steel guitars,

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

s, electric

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

electric violin An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument intentionally made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body. It can also refer to a violin fi ...

s, and

instrument amplifier An instrument amplifier is an electronic device that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal of a musical instrument into a larger electronic signal to feed to a loudspeaker. An instrument amplifier is used with musical ins ...

s. In 1931, he joined with Paul Barth and

Adolph Rickenbacker Adolph Rickenbacker (April 1, 1887 – March 21, 1976) was a Swiss-American electrical engineer who co-founded the Rickenbacker guitar company along with George Beauchamp and Paul Barth. Rickenbacker was born in Basel, Switzerland as Adolf Ric ...

to form the Ro-Pat-In Corporation to produce and sell electrified string instruments. The most notable of these, the Rickenbacher A-22 (and A-25) lapsteel guitar – known as the "frying pan" – is widely regarded as the first mass-produced electric guitar. Production of the instrument began in 1932. In 1937, Beauchamp secured a United States

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

for his version of the electric guitar. Beauchamp married Myrtle Johnston in 1917. They had two children, Frances and Nolan. He died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

in 1941 while

deep sea fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inc ...

near Los Angeles.

Inventions

*1929: Patent applied for the single-cone dobro guitar, patent #1,808,756 *1930: Patent applied for metal

finger pick A fingerpick is a type of plectrum used most commonly for playing bluegrass style banjo music. Most fingerpicks are composed of metal or plastic (usually Celluloid or Delrin). Unlike flat guitar picks, which are held between the thumb and fi ...

s (now commonly used for steel guitars and banjos), patent #1,787,136 *1934: Patent applied for the electric lap steel guitar (nicknamed " the frying pan"), patent #2,089,171 *1936: Patent applied for the

(called the electro Spanish guitar, which was a hollow-body electric guitar), patent #2152783 *1936: Patent applied for the

(called the electro violin), patent #2130174 Catalogues from the Electro String Instrument Corporation show a range of electric instruments. In 1932, Beauchamp's Ro-Pat-In company marketed the electric lap steel guitar. The electric guitar was supposedly marketed the same year; early catalogues showing the instrument are not dated.

References

*''Rickenbacker'' by Richard Smith (1988) *

External links

*Rickenbacker
The Earliest Days of the Electric GuitarWhich Came First- Electric Guitar or Amp?
- Article examining Beauchamp's Electro violins *2014 thesis by Matthew Hill
George Beauchamp and the rise of the electric guitar up to 1939
1899 births 1941 deaths American luthiers Vaudeville performers 20th-century American inventors {{US-music-bio-stub