GIZMOS, GADGETS, AND GUITARS

How did the electric guitar come to be?

Few would guess that the inventor of the mass-produced, solid-body electric guitar couldn’t even play. But what inventor Leo Fender excelled at was creating prototypes, collecting feedback, experimenting, refining, and improving. From childhood, he was interested in how things worked and how to fix what was broken, tinkering with radios and even finding a way to improve his vision when he lost the use of an eye. His parents didn’t see a future in such work, however, so he trained as an accountant. When the Great Depression hit, few had a need to keep track of money, but everyone needed to mend broken belongings, so he opened a repair shop. There he became aware of lap steel guitars, and the rest, accompanied by trial and error, is history. This tale of an idiosyncratic man with a curious mind serves as a virtual textbook on the STEM process and shows the value of applied inquiry, open-mindedness, and resilience. Useful for showing connections between different disciplines and how innovation can be implemented, this interesting story, told with energy and accompanied by appealing illustrations of the bespectacled White tinkerer surrounded by his gadgets, traces the history of the electric guitar we know today.

An engaging mix of biography, social-emotional skills, the development of a musical instrument, and the STEM process.