08/11/2026
ON THIS DAY — AUGUST 10, 1937 🎸
A patent was granted for one of the instruments that helped change popular music forever.
George Beauchamp’s U.S. patent for an electrically amplified stringed instrument — associated with the legendary Rickenbacker “Frying Pan” — was granted on August 10, 1937.
It looked more like something you’d use to cook breakfast than the weapon Angus Young would eventually take onstage.
But the basic revolution was there:
Strings → electromagnetic pickup → amplifier.
From those early experiments came a lineage that would eventually give us the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Les Paul, SG and essentially the entire vocabulary of electric rock guitar.
No electric guitar?
No Hendrix.
No Page.
No Iommi.
No Van Halen.
No metal as we know it.
Pretty wild when you think about it.
So here’s the question:
Who do you think changed the ELECTRIC guitar more than anyone else in history? 👇
