UNCLE ARTHUR'S GLASS HARMONICA

 UNCLE  ARTHUR'S  GLASS HARMONICA

By Ken Paul

When I was a wee lad my family and possibly others, too, were visiting Uncle Arthur and Aunt Lillian's family in Big Falls, but the occasion might have been at another relative's home. I was quite small to remember many details. Maybe my older sisters Bernice and Alice can elucidate on what really happened contrary to my account of Uncle Arthur's wonderful creation.

Uncle Arthur had read about Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica and might also have seen an illustration of it.  The idea of using goblets of different sizes to make a musical scale  on which he could play tunes caught his fancy and he made himself one.  However, he did not try to copy Franklin who put goblets, sans stems, on a long spindle that he could rotate, but used the idea of setting the goblets in a row or two similar to the glass harmonicas Franklin had heard in Paris when he was the American envoy to the royal court during the American Revolution.

I don't know where Uncle Arthur got his water goblets, but he made a long wooden box in which he set about a dozen of them in a row.. I don't believe they varied in sizes to effect a different pitch for each goblet, but he filled each one to a water level that would cause it to have its own pitch and arranged them to create a musical scale  of about an octave.

Then, he would lightly and deftly rub the rims to produce the tones for a simple tune.

When I was in junior high school I attempted to emulate what he had done by using some of my mother's goblets, which did not please her, but failed to produce any musical tones at all. 

I thought Uncle Arthur was a pretty smart man for what he had done.