A glass harmonica, also called an armonica, was inspired by the sound you can make by running your finger around the rim of a wine glass. Street performers in the eighteenth century made music this way, varying the notes by varying the amount of water in each glass.

Benjamin Franklin served as a liaison between several American colonies and their parent country during the years leading up to the Revolution, and it was while he was living in London that he heard music being made from glasses. He considered the tone worthy of more than a novelty act, and invented the glass harmonica. in 1761, he created a series of graduated bowls, the pitch of the note depending on bowl size, and thus making the water used by street musicians unnecessary. Since they didn't need to hold water, the bowls no longer needed to be 'right side up', and could be nested within one another, from smallest to largest.

A glass harmonica, then, was a series of glass bowls tuned to particular notes, with holes drilled in their bottoms so that they could be 'strung' on a spindle. The bowl-spindle was laid horizontally in a cradle. The spindle was connected to foot peddles which turned it, and thus the bowls, at a rate depending on how fast the player operated the peddles.

The player made music by wetting his or her fingertips (most early players were women) and pressing them on the rims of the bowls to make the individual notes. Pressing more than one bowl's rim produced chords. The music was described as ethereal, angelic, the music of the spheres.

The glass harmonica was quickly the rage in England and Europe, with Mozart and Beethoven being among the composers to write music for it. Glass blowers had difficulty keeping up with demand. Glass harmonicas appeared in genteel homes everywhere.

The rage was relatively short-lived; many performers claimed that the music upset them emotionally, and one noted glass harmonica player, Marianne Davies, ended her days in an asylum, which many attributed to her close association with the instrument. When early hypnotist Franz Mesmer began using the glass harmonica in his demonstrations of 'mesmerism', the instrument acquired some of the disrepute in which he was held. Soon all varieties of malady were being attributed to both the playing of the instrument and the hearing of the music.

It is possible that players of the glass harmonica may have acquired lead poisoning from the glass used, but the claims of ill-health effects of simply hearing the music are simply hysteria. The sounds produced by a glass harmonica are the same as are produced by Tibetan brass singing bowls (which are sounded by rubbing a wooden rod around the rim). Since singing bowls have been used for meditation and religious celebration in Tibet for hundreds of years, any adverse health effects would certainly have been noticed before the advent of the glass harmonica.

In any event, the glass harmonica fell out of favor and after 1820 or so, was no longer being made. It was revived in 1984 by Boston glass-maker Gerhard Finkenbeiner, and there are a few glass harmonica players today. The modern glass harmonica is rotated by electricity, not foot peddles, and the bowls are made of pure quartz crystal.

Dean Shostak plays glass harmonica in Colonial Williamsburg, and has a specially-made foot-powered instrument, in keeping with the colonial period. He reports no ill-effects of playing the armonica, although if he plays for longer than two hours a day, his fingerprints disappear, rubbed off by the glass.