Orville Gibson

In 1898, Orville Gibson was awarded the patent for an “Improved Mandolin,” using principles that could be applied to “guitars, mandolas, and lutes,” as well. The invention was that of a back, neck, and ribs structure carved from one piece of wood, with an arched soundboard and slightly hollowed neck. Gibson believed that standard construction hindered the acoustical capacities of plucked stringed instruments, as he stated in his patent:

Heretofore mandolins and like instruments have been constructed of too many separate parts bent or carved and glued or veneered and provided with internal braces, bridges, and splices to that extent that they have not possessed that degree of sensitive resonance and vibratory action necessary to produce the power and quality of tone and melody found in the use of the instrument below described…The front or sounding-board and the back board are carved in a somewhat convex form to give them proper stiffness and are preferably the thickest at and near the center. They are attached to the rim by gluing and form an upper/lower closure to the hollow body of the instrument…with parts thus constructed and put together no braces, splices, blocks, or bridges are necessary in the interior of the body of the instru-ment, which, if employed, would rob the instrument of much of its volume of tone and the peculiar excellency thereof. This guitar design, influenced by violin construction, marked the beginning of a significant development in American archtop guitar-making.