We have all been subjected to the musical preferences of people whose taste is, to put it charitably, highly questionable. There’s the neighbor kid who blasts his stereo at a volume suggesting he believes he has been personally appointed DJ for the entire subdivision. Then there’s the guy who drives around in a car held together by duct tape, rust, and the occasional act of divine intervention, yet somehow possesses an audio system more sophisticated than half the equipment aboard the space shuttle. His subwoofers are apparently designed to transmit seismic shock waves directly to the Earth’s core, where even the tectonic plates are beginning to complain about the noise.

After enough exposure to this sort of auditory assault, most of us have seriously wondered whether the human brain can withstand such punishment without suffering permanent psychological damage. Surely, we reason, there must be a limit to how much mind-rotting music a person can endure before being driven completely insane. At the very least, there ought to be something in the Geneva Conventions about it.

As it turns out, ours is hardly the first generation to fear that music might pose a threat to our collective sanity. More than two centuries ago, people were expressing remarkably similar concerns about a musical instrument that some believed could cause nervous disorders, depression, hallucinations, and even madness.

There was, however, one rather important difference. The problem wasn’t that the music was dreadful.

It was that the music was too beautiful.

And the man responsible for inventing this alleged menace to mental health was none other than Benjamin Franklin, a founding father who apparently wasn’t satisfied with revolutionizing science, politics, and electricity. In 1761, Franklin invented the glass armonica, a remarkable musical instrument whose hauntingly beautiful sounds captivated European audiences, inspired compositions by Mozart and Beethoven, and eventually acquired a reputation for being capable of driving its listeners out of their minds.

For a man who spent much of his life trying to make the world a more rational place, Franklin certainly managed to invent something that inspired a remarkable amount of irrational behavior.

Benjamin Franklin Discovers That Drinking Glasses Have Musical Ambitions

Benjamin Franklin was many things: printer, writer, scientist, inventor, diplomat, political philosopher, and founding father. He was also a man who had difficulty encountering an interesting phenomenon without immediately wondering whether he could improve it. His accomplishments included the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove. He even contributed to the long, confusing history of daylight saving time with a satirical suggestion about getting people out of bed earlier.

During his years in London as a representative of colonial Pennsylvania, Franklin encountered a musical performance involving ordinary drinking glasses. The performer produced notes by rubbing moistened fingers around the rims of glasses containing different amounts of water. Each glass produced a different pitch, allowing a skilled musician to create melodies from what otherwise appeared to be an unusually elaborate table setting. Franklin was sufficiently impressed that he eventually developed his own improved version of the instrument in 1761.

The principle was not new. Richard Puckeridge and other performers had already popularized musical glasses, and Franklin was particularly impressed by demonstrations associated with English scientist and musician Edward Delaval. The sound was remarkably pure, sustained, and delicate. Unlike a plucked string or struck bell, a glass could continue singing as long as the musician maintained the proper friction.

There was, however, a practical problem. Playing an assortment of drinking glasses required a considerable amount of space, along with the ability to reach individual rims arranged across a table. The glasses also had to be tuned by adjusting the water levels. A performer needed musical talent, careful preparation, and presumably an audience willing to overlook the appearance of a man conducting a concert with the contents of his kitchen cabinets.

Franklin recognized an opportunity. What if the glasses could be arranged more efficiently? What if they could be tuned permanently? And what if the musician could play several notes simultaneously without reaching halfway across the furniture?

He began experimenting with a solution. By the end of 1761, he had produced something extraordinary.

The Glass Armonica: A Piano Made of Spinning Glass

Working with London glassblower Charles James, Franklin developed an instrument consisting of graduated glass bowls arranged horizontally on an iron spindle. The bowls were carefully manufactured in different sizes and thicknesses so that each produced a particular musical note. Rather than adjusting the pitch with water, the glass itself determined the note.

The bowls were nested closely together, with their rims exposed at different positions along the spindle. A foot treadle operated a wheel that rotated the entire assembly. The musician sat in front of the instrument, placed moistened fingers against the revolving glass rims, and produced tones through friction. Because both hands remained free, the player could perform chords and more complicated musical passages.

Franklin’s original design included approximately three octaves of notes. He even color-coded the bowls to help performers identify them. In his detailed description written to Italian scientist Giambatista Beccaria on July 13, 1762, Franklin explained that the notes followed the colors of the spectrum: C was red, D orange, E yellow, and so forth, while intermediate semitones were marked in white.

He was sufficiently pleased with the finished instrument to give it a name drawn from the Italian word for harmony: armonica. Notice the absence of an initial H. That was deliberate. The instrument was not an early version of the mouth-blown harmonica that would become familiar in later centuries. It was an elaborate mechanical arrangement of glass bowls, something closer in appearance to a peculiar spinning machine designed by a man who had become bored with conventional musical instruments.

Franklin emphasized that its tones could be increased or diminished through finger pressure and sustained as long as the performer wished. Once the bowls were properly tuned, they did not require constant adjustment. In other words, the instrument offered the expressive possibilities of musical glasses without requiring the performer to interrupt a sonata to refill a goblet.

There was also something distinctly Franklin-like about its engineering. It combined an understanding of vibration, mechanical efficiency, acoustics, and human convenience. Where others had seen an entertaining parlor trick, Franklin saw the possibility of an entirely new instrument.

From Benjamin Franklin’s Workshop to the Concert Halls of Europe

The glass armonica did not remain a private amusement for long. In February 1762, musician Marianne Davies gave what appears to have been its first public performance in London. Davies was already an accomplished performer on the flute and harpsichord, making her particularly well suited to demonstrating the new instrument’s possibilities.

Her concerts attracted attention, and she eventually traveled through Europe with her sister Cecilia, who was a singer. Their performances helped introduce Franklin’s invention to audiences accustomed to harpsichords, organs, violins, and other instruments that generally did not require performers to keep their fingers damp throughout the evening.

For aristocratic audiences, the armonica offered something unusually fashionable. It was novel, scientifically interesting, and capable of producing music that seemed to float through a room. At a time when Enlightenment thinkers celebrated the relationship between science and artistic achievement, Franklin’s invention provided a particularly elegant example of both disciplines working together.

It also possessed the considerable advantage of being associated with Benjamin Franklin. Even before American independence, Franklin was internationally respected for his scientific achievements. After the Revolution, his reputation became more formidable still. Owning or hearing an instrument invented by Franklin was rather like attending a concert performed on a scientific celebrity’s personal experiment.

The instrument was especially successful in German-speaking Europe. Musicians developed impressive technical skills, composers began incorporating its distinctive voice into their work, and instrument makers produced additional examples. By the time of Franklin’s death in 1790, the glass armonica had become one of the more remarkable musical innovations of the century.

There was just one problem. The more people heard it, the more some began wondering whether such an extraordinary sound could possibly be good for them.

When Mozart Meets the Musical Drinking Glasses

Among those fascinated by the glass armonica was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His interest began long before he composed his best-known works for the instrument, and it involved a rather unexpected acquaintance.

In July 1773, the seventeen-year-old Mozart and his father, Leopold, visited the home of physician Franz Anton Mesmer in Vienna. Mesmer owned an elegant glass armonica and played it for his guests. Leopold described the experience enthusiastically in letters to his wife, noting both the instrument’s beauty and its considerable expense.

In a subsequent letter dated August 12, Leopold reported that Wolfgang had played Mesmer’s armonica himself. His father expressed a wish that the family could have one. Evidently, the young Mozart was sufficiently impressed by Franklin’s invention to want continued access to it, although acquiring such an elaborate instrument was not a casual purchase.

The encounter would eventually bear musical fruit. In 1791, during the final year of his life, Mozart composed his Adagio and Rondo in C Minor and C Major, K. 617, for glass armonica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello. He wrote the piece for Marianne Kirchgessner, a celebrated blind armonica virtuoso whose performances had brought her considerable acclaim.

Mozart also composed the Adagio in C Major, K. 356, for solo glass armonica. Both works demonstrate that Franklin’s unusual instrument was capable of serious classical music, not merely producing pleasant background noises while aristocrats discussed their increasingly elaborate hairstyles.

Ludwig van Beethoven later wrote for the glass armonica as well. His incidental music for the 1815 drama Leonore Prohaska included a melodrama accompanied by the instrument. It was an appropriate choice for music intended to create a mysterious and emotionally charged atmosphere.

The glass armonica had now attracted two of classical music’s greatest composers. Under ordinary circumstances, this would qualify as a fairly encouraging professional trajectory.

Unfortunately, those were not ordinary circumstances.

Why Did People Think the Glass Armonica Could Cause Insanity?

As the instrument’s popularity spread, unsettling stories began circulating about its effects on performers and listeners. Some musicians reportedly experienced nervousness, cramps, dizziness, or unusual physical exhaustion. Others described emotional disturbances. This writer experienced all of those symptoms while watching the live-action motion picture Cats, although admittedly for entirely different reasons. In the case of the glass armonica, however, sufferers believed their symptoms were connected to prolonged exposure to the instrument’s distinctive vibrations.

These reports emerged during an era in which physicians understood relatively little about the functioning of the nervous system. Eighteenth-century medicine routinely attributed mysterious physical and psychological symptoms to disturbances of the nerves. The terminology sounded reassuringly scientific, even when it explained approximately as much as saying that something had gone wrong somewhere inside the patient.

The glass armonica seemed particularly suspicious because of its unusual sound. Its tones were soft yet penetrating, with sustained vibrations that could blend together almost imperceptibly. The music could seem to emerge without the sharp attack normally associated with a struck or plucked instrument. Listeners sometimes found it difficult to associate such sounds with a familiar physical source.

For admirers, this was the source of its beauty. For critics, it suggested that the music might interact with the human nervous system in ways that were not fully understood. What one person described as heavenly, another interpreted as unnaturally disturbing.

By 1788, the concerns had become sufficiently familiar that an instructional manual on the armonica warned that certain individuals should avoid playing it for fear of worsening their mental condition. The warning reflected a growing belief that prolonged exposure to the instrument could aggravate nervous or emotional disorders.

Modern readers might recognize the beginning of a familiar pattern. An unfamiliar technology appears, people experience something unusual, medical explanations are proposed before convincing evidence exists, and the public begins treating speculation as established fact. The only difference is that eighteenth-century Europeans accomplished all of this without social media.

The Instrument That Supposedly Summoned Spirits

The claims soon expanded beyond ordinary medical concerns. Some listeners attributed supernatural properties to the armonica’s sounds, believing they could evoke spirits or establish a connection with the world beyond death. Its haunting tones seemed especially appropriate for such speculation.

Stories of alarming incidents circulated alongside these beliefs. The historical account of Franklin’s original glass armonica includes a particularly disturbing story about a child who reportedly died during a performance in Germany. It also describes the instrument being prohibited in several German towns following concerns about its effects.

Those allegations require some historical caution. The surviving accounts do not establish that the music caused the child’s death, and the commonly repeated stories about municipal bans are difficult to verify against specific ordinances, dates, and local administrative records. The distinction matters. An instrument acquiring a reputation for causing death is historically significant; proving that a particular performance caused a death is an entirely different undertaking.

Nevertheless, such stories helped transform the armonica’s reputation. An instrument once celebrated for its celestial beauty became associated with nervous collapse, emotional instability, and supernatural danger. The same qualities that made the music captivating also made it a convenient object of suspicion.

It was a rather impressive reversal of public opinion. Franklin had created an instrument that inspired people to contemplate the heavens, only to discover that some of them were now worried about whom the music might invite down from there.

Enter Franz Anton Mesmer, the Man Who Wanted to Cure Everything With Invisible Magnetism

The glass armonica’s reputation became even more complicated through its association with Franz Anton Mesmer, the physician who believed he could cure practically anything by manipulating an invisible force called animal magnetism. Mesmer was also the man who had introduced young Mozart to the instrument in 1773. As we have previously discovered, Mesmer was remarkably successful at persuading respectable Europeans that sitting around a tub, holding metal rods, and fainting dramatically constituted cutting-edge medical treatment. The fact that his theories had little scientific support was apparently a minor administrative detail.

Mesmer believed that an invisible fluid permeated the universe and circulated through living organisms. He called the supposed phenomenon animal magnetism. According to his theory, disease resulted when this mysterious fluid became obstructed or improperly distributed, and health could be restored by manipulating its flow.

There was little reliable evidence that such a fluid existed, but Mesmer was not particularly hindered by that detail. He developed elaborate treatments involving gestures, physical contact, metallic objects, carefully arranged environments, and groups of patients. His methods became fashionable, particularly after he moved to Paris, where audiences were fascinated by demonstrations that seemed to produce remarkable emotional and physical reactions.

Music was an important part of the atmosphere. The glass armonica’s unusual tones seemed ideally suited to sessions intended to influence the body’s mysterious internal forces. Mesmer incorporated music, including the armonica, into his therapeutic environment, where it could heighten the emotional experience and contribute to the impression that something extraordinary was occurring.

Patients sometimes experienced trembling, convulsions, emotional outbursts, or dramatic sensations during these treatments. Mesmer regarded such reactions as evidence that his methods were influencing the magnetic fluid. Skeptics suspected that the reactions had more to do with suggestion, expectations, and the elaborate circumstances surrounding the treatment.

The instrument’s association with these sessions was unfortunate. As the reputation of mesmerism became increasingly controversial, the glass armonica became linked in the public imagination with trance-like states and unusual nervous symptoms.

Franklin’s musical invention had become part of a fashionable medical spectacle involving invisible forces, mysterious vibrations, and dramatic demonstrations of healing. Given Franklin’s scientific temperament, the next development would have been particularly interesting to him.

Benjamin Franklin Investigates Mesmer—and Things Get Awkward

By 1784, Mesmer’s claims had attracted enough controversy that King Louis XVI of France authorized a formal investigation. A commission of distinguished scientists and physicians was appointed to examine the evidence supporting animal magnetism. Among its members were chemist Antoine Lavoisier, astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, and Benjamin Franklin, who was then serving as the American minister to France.

Franklin was not investigating whether the glass armonica itself caused mental illness. The commission’s assignment concerned the claimed therapeutic effects of animal magnetism, particularly the practices demonstrated by Mesmer’s associate Charles d’Eslon. Nevertheless, the inquiry placed Franklin in the curious position of examining a medical movement that had incorporated an instrument of his own invention.

The commissioners approached the question through observation and controlled experiments. Rather than simply accepting accounts of miraculous recoveries or dramatic physical reactions, they attempted to determine whether the alleged magnetic fluid produced effects independently of what patients believed was happening.

In one particularly revealing series of experiments, subjects were blindfolded and led to believe they were being magnetized when no such treatment was occurring. Some nevertheless developed the expected sensations and reactions. Conversely, when supposed magnetism was applied without a subject’s knowledge, the anticipated effects frequently failed to appear.

Another experiment involved a supposedly magnetized tree. The commissioners arranged for a subject to approach several trees while believing that one contained magnetic powers. The results failed to establish the existence of any special force. The patient’s responses were much more consistent with expectations than with the location of the allegedly magnetized object.

The investigators’ 1784 report on animal magnetism concluded that the claimed magnetic fluid had not been demonstrated. They attributed the observed reactions principally to imagination, suggestion, and the circumstances surrounding the treatments.

It was an important moment in the development of experimental thinking about human behavior. The commission did not deny that patients experienced real sensations. It challenged Mesmer’s explanation for those sensations, demonstrating that the belief that a treatment was being administered could produce powerful responses even when the alleged physical agent was absent.

And the commission reached those conclusions with Benjamin Franklin among its members.

There is something wonderfully ironic about this. Franklin invented a musical instrument whose mysterious sound helped create an atmosphere for Mesmer’s treatments. Years later, Franklin participated in the investigation that undermined the scientific foundations of Mesmer’s therapeutic system.

He had, in a sense, helped expose the questionable claims of a movement that had borrowed his invention to make its demonstrations more convincing. It was an unexpected intersection of scientific skepticism, experimental medicine, and musical history.

Did Franklin Accidentally Help Destroy His Own Invention?

The relationship between the investigation of Mesmer and the glass armonica’s eventual disappearance has attracted scholarly attention. In their historical examination of Franklin, Mozart, Mesmer, and the armonica, psychologists David Gallo and Stanley Finger proposed that Franklin indirectly contributed to the instrument’s decline by helping discredit the therapeutic movement with which it had become associated.

The suggestion is plausible, although the chronology deserves attention. Franklin’s commission issued its conclusions in 1784, but Mozart composed important music for the armonica in 1791. The instrument plainly did not disappear the moment the commissioners announced their findings. Indeed, its musical life continued well beyond the controversy.

Its decline was more gradual and probably reflected several overlapping developments. Mesmer’s controversial reputation may have damaged public confidence, while warnings about nervous disorders reinforced the instrument’s unsettling image. Meanwhile, musical tastes and practical requirements were changing in ways that presented serious challenges for Franklin’s delicate creation.

The history is therefore not quite as simple as Franklin inventing an instrument and then personally bringing about its destruction. That would make an excellent dramatic ending, but history occasionally refuses to cooperate with the requirements of a tidy narrative.

The more interesting conclusion is that Franklin’s instrument became entangled in a dispute over the difference between genuine scientific evidence and the powerful effects of human expectation. Its decline was influenced by an environment in which medicine, psychology, music, and superstition were not always as carefully separated as modern audiences might prefer.

What About Lead Poisoning? Was There a Real Medical Danger?

One frequently repeated explanation for the alleged illnesses of armonica players involves lead poisoning. Some historical glass contained lead compounds, and certain instruments used paint or decorative materials that might also have included potentially harmful substances. Because performers constantly touched the glass with wet fingers, later commentators suggested that toxic exposure could have contributed to the reported symptoms.

Lead poisoning is a genuine medical condition, and sufficient exposure can cause neurological, physical, and psychological problems. However, establishing that lead can produce such symptoms is not the same as demonstrating that glass armonica players commonly absorbed dangerous quantities through ordinary performances.

There is no convincing historical evidence that Franklin’s instrument routinely caused lead poisoning. The available reports do not establish exposure levels, identify a consistent medical pattern among performers, or demonstrate that the glass itself was responsible for the illnesses described. Furthermore, complaints about the armonica’s effects included reactions among listeners who never touched the instrument at all.

A historical medical analysis published in 2015, Benjamin Franklin and His Glass Armonica: From Music as Therapeutic to Pathological, examines how changing ideas about the nervous system contributed to the instrument’s reputation. The controversy illustrates how easily emotional reactions and poorly understood symptoms could be attributed to a novel physical cause.

None of this proves that every historical player was perfectly healthy. Musicians can become ill for countless reasons, and eighteenth-century physicians lacked many of the diagnostic tools available today. The important point is that no persuasive evidence establishes Franklin’s glass armonica as a general cause of insanity, depression, or neurological disease.

Its reputation for psychological danger was considerably more impressive than the scientific evidence supporting it.

The Real Enemy of the Glass Armonica May Have Been the Concert Hall

While rumors of madness and supernatural influence made entertaining conversation, the glass armonica faced a much more ordinary problem: changing musical fashion.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, orchestras expanded, musical compositions became increasingly dramatic, and concert halls grew larger. Audiences expected greater volume, broader dynamic contrasts, and increasingly powerful instrumental combinations. The piano developed into a more versatile and forceful instrument, while larger ensembles filled performance spaces with sound.

Franklin’s glass armonica had been designed for a rather different musical environment. Its greatest strength was its delicacy. The instrument could produce exquisitely sustained tones and subtle emotional effects, particularly in intimate rooms where listeners could appreciate its quiet voice. Against an increasingly substantial orchestra, however, that refinement became a liability.

A glass armonica competing with a large Romantic orchestra faced something like the challenge of conducting a whispered conversation beside an artillery demonstration. The whisper might be beautiful, meaningful, and artistically sophisticated, but the artillery was likely to win the argument.

The instrument was also inconvenient to transport. Glass bowls were fragile, specialized construction required considerable skill, and relatively few musicians mastered the unusual playing technique. A conventional piano, while hardly the world’s most portable object, offered considerably greater musical flexibility and a much larger pool of trained performers.

Yet the armonica did not disappear completely. Its eerie associations made it particularly suitable for theatrical works involving intense emotion or supernatural atmosphere. Gaetano Donizetti originally envisioned glass armonica music for the famous madness scene in his 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor, although the part was replaced by flute in the original production.

The irony is difficult to overlook. An instrument once accused of causing madness was considered particularly appropriate for accompanying a fictional character’s descent into it. The glass armonica had found a theatrical specialty, even as its broader popularity faded.

By the 1820s, it was already far less fashionable than during its eighteenth-century heyday. It survived in scattered performances, collections, and specialized compositions, but it had largely lost its place in mainstream musical life.

Franklin’s Favorite Invention Had an Unexpected Afterlife

Benjamin Franklin did not live to witness the instrument’s complete decline. He died in 1790, having continued to enjoy the armonica despite the controversies surrounding it. Unlike some critics, he apparently did not regard playing the instrument as an imminent threat to his mental health.

Although Franklin is remembered for inventions with obvious practical benefits, music occupied a special place in his life. He enjoyed traditional Scottish melodies and appreciated the armonica’s ability to express emotional subtleties. His 1762 description of its advantages was not merely a technical specification; it was the work of someone genuinely moved by the sounds his invention could produce.

Franklin also declined to patent the armonica, consistent with his broader reluctance to claim exclusive commercial rights over his inventions. He believed that inventors benefited from the work of those who came before them and ought to be willing to share their own discoveries. That philosophy explains why he could devote considerable effort to developing a sophisticated musical machine without treating it primarily as a commercial opportunity.

His affection for the instrument also adds another dimension to a personality that is often reduced to familiar portraits of a practical, industrious founding father. Franklin was not simply interested in making lightning less dangerous or improving the efficiency of household heating. He valued pleasure, beauty, curiosity, and the enjoyment of life.

After all, this was the same man who could produce thoughtful political philosophy while also writing the delightfully irreverent essay Fart Proudly. Franklin understood that serious intellectual accomplishment and an appreciation for life’s more entertaining possibilities were not mutually exclusive.

The glass armonica belonged to that more playful side of his genius. It was an invention created not because society urgently needed another method of making music, but because Franklin encountered something beautiful and wondered whether it could be made even better.

The Glass Armonica Returns From Musical Obscurity

For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the glass armonica remained an unusual historical curiosity. Surviving examples appeared in museum collections, and occasional musicians explored the instrument’s forgotten repertoire. But the days when its delicate tones had entertained European courts were long gone.

Its fortunes began improving during the twentieth century as musicians and instrument makers became interested in reviving historical performance techniques. Among the most important figures was American glassblower Gerhard Finkenbeiner, who began manufacturing modern versions of Franklin’s invention in the early 1980s.

Finkenbeiner drew on his experience producing specialized scientific glassware to develop armonicas made from high-purity quartz glass. Unlike many historical examples, these modern instruments could incorporate electric motors to rotate the bowls, eliminating the need for the original foot-powered mechanism.

The results were impressive. Quartz glass produced clear, sustained tones, and the new instruments introduced Franklin’s invention to contemporary performers. Modern glass armonicas also offered the reassuring advantage of materials that did not depend upon the potentially lead-containing glass compositions associated with some earlier examples.

The revival produced instruments that can still be found in performances and recordings today. The modern quartz glass armonica remains a specialized and expensive instrument, but its continued production demonstrates that Franklin’s original concept has not exhausted its musical possibilities.

The instrument can still sound mysterious, especially to listeners unfamiliar with the technique used to play it. Its notes seem to materialize and fade without the familiar physical cues associated with a piano hammer or violin bow. Yet what once provoked fears of supernatural influence can now be appreciated as an unusual and ingenious application of acoustic physics.

Franklin would probably have enjoyed that development. An invention inspired by curiosity, nearly forgotten through changing fashions and public suspicion, had found a new generation of people willing to appreciate its peculiar beauty.

When Musical Innovation Becomes a Public Health Scare

The story of the glass armonica is particularly revealing because it illustrates a recurring feature of technological history. New inventions do not enter society as isolated collections of mechanical parts. They arrive surrounded by expectations, anxieties, cultural assumptions, and occasionally an impressive assortment of completely unsupported theories.

In the eighteenth century, the glass armonica sounded sufficiently different from familiar instruments that some people interpreted its unusual qualities as evidence of hidden dangers. Its connection with Mesmer’s controversial treatments only reinforced the suspicion that something mysterious must be happening. In an age fascinated by invisible fluids, electrical forces, and the workings of the nervous system, an instrument that seemed to produce music from nowhere was particularly vulnerable to extravagant explanations.

There is an amusing parallel with the history of other musical inventions. When Adolphe Sax introduced his revolutionary instrument in the nineteenth century, he encountered fierce professional opposition, rival manufacturers, and controversy over the consequences of his innovation. The extraordinary struggles surrounding the invention of the saxophone demonstrate that musicians have never been particularly enthusiastic about newcomers disrupting established traditions.

Franklin’s instrument encountered a rather different kind of resistance. Its critics were not merely concerned that the armonica would take work away from existing performers. Some feared that listening to it might interfere with the fundamental operation of the human brain.

That is a notably severe complaint to direct against something intended to make pleasant noises.

What makes the controversy especially interesting is that the alleged danger grew alongside legitimate admiration. Mozart could appreciate the instrument’s artistic capabilities while others interpreted those same acoustic properties as evidence of a medical hazard. Mesmer could exploit its emotional atmosphere without demonstrating that the mysterious fluid he believed in actually existed. Franklin could invent and enjoy the instrument while helping expose questionable scientific claims associated with its use.

The same object thus occupied very different places in eighteenth-century culture: scientific achievement, fashionable entertainment, serious musical instrument, therapeutic accessory, and supposed threat to mental stability.

Few musical inventions have carried quite so much historical baggage while remaining physically composed of little more than glass, a spindle, and a convenient way to keep the whole arrangement spinning.

Benjamin Franklin’s Glass Armonica: A Beautiful Way to Lose Your Mind

Benjamin Franklin’s glass armonica occupies a rather unusual place in the history of musical instruments. Mozart composed for it, Beethoven embraced its haunting tones, and European aristocrats paid good money to hear it performed. Yet somehow, an invention celebrated for producing some of the most beautiful sounds imaginable acquired a reputation for causing depression, nervous disorders, hallucinations, and outright insanity. Most musicians would consider having both Mozart and Beethoven write music for their instrument a fairly successful career. Franklin managed to accomplish that and still ended up with what amounted to an eighteenth-century public health warning.

Of course, there was never convincing evidence that the glass armonica actually drove anyone insane. Its real offense appears to have been producing sounds so unusual that people felt compelled to invent equally unusual explanations for them. Throw in Franz Anton Mesmer, his invisible magnetic fluids, and a few reports of people behaving strangely, and the instrument was practically begging to become the subject of an elaborate conspiracy theory. Fortunately for Franklin, eighteenth-century Europe had not yet invented the internet, so the rumors could spread only as quickly as newspapers, pamphlets, and gossiping aristocrats could carry them.

Today, we can listen to the glass armonica without worrying that its delicate vibrations will scramble our brains, summon disembodied spirits, or send us directly to the nearest institution for the mentally disturbed. That is reassuring, particularly because it means Franklin’s remarkable invention can finally be appreciated for what it was: an ingenious combination of science, engineering, and artistic beauty.

Which brings us back to the neighbor kid with the stereo and the fellow whose automobile contains approximately $800 worth of mechanical components and $15,000 worth of subwoofers. More than 250 years after Franklin invented his glass armonica, we still occasionally wonder whether music can drive a person insane. The difference is that our eighteenth-century ancestors worried that the music was too beautiful, while we tend to worry that the music is too horrible.

And although science has yet to establish that either sort of music can cause insanity, anyone who has endured three consecutive hours of bass-heavy music rattling the windows at two o’clock in the morning knows that the question deserves further investigation.

One thing is certain: Neither the neighbor kid nor the bass-loving driver ever seems particularly interested in treating the rest of us to the soothing sounds of Benjamin Franklin’s glass armonica.

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