Editing Glass harmonica (section)

==Forerunners==
Because its sounding portion is made of glass, the glass harmonica is a type of [[crystallophone]]. The phenomenon of rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine goblet to produce tones is documented back to [[Renaissance]] times; [[Galileo]] considered the phenomenon (in his ''Two New Sciences''), as did [[Athanasius Kircher]].

The Irish musician [[Richard Pockrich (inventor)|Richard Pockrich]] is typically credited as the first to play an instrument composed of glass vessels (glass harp) by rubbing his fingers around the rims.<ref name=Bloch>{{cite web | last = Bloch | first = Thomas | title = GFI Scientific glass blowing products and services: THE GLASSHARMONICA | url = http://www.finkenbeiner.com/gh.html | date = 2009-01-30 | access-date = 2016-06-05}}</ref> Beginning in the 1740s, he performed in London on a set of upright goblets filled with varying amounts of water. His career was cut short by a fire in his room, which killed him and destroyed his apparatus.{{citation needed|date=July 2015}}

[[Edward Delaval]], a friend of Benjamin Franklin and a fellow of the [[Royal Society]], extended the experiments of Pockrich, contriving a set of glasses better tuned and easier to play.<ref name="autogenerated2000">Brands, H. W. (2000) "The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin" First Anchor Books Edition, March 2002 {{ISBN|0-385-49540-4}}</ref> During the same decade, [[Christoph Willibald Gluck]] also attracted attention playing a similar instrument in England. In April 1760, the poet [[Thomas Gray]] wrote to [[James Brown (academic)|James Brown]], Master of [[Pembroke College, Cambridge]], of a performance by Delaval that: "No instrument I know has so celestial a tone. It was like a cherubim in a box."<ref>{{cite book |url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/The_letters_of_Thomas_Gray%2C_including_the_correspondence_of_Gray_and_Mason_%28IA_lettersofthomasg02gray%29.pdf |title=The Letters of Thomas Gray |volume=II |page=131 |editor-first=Duncan C. |editor-last=Tovey |publisher=[[George Bell & Sons]] |location=London |year=1904 |via=[[Wikimedia Commons]]}}</ref>