h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thankyou for your kind words about my Typhoon Knowledge. It is, however well surpassed by my Guitar knowledge as I work in a music shop and read voraciously anything I am very interested in.
The Spanish or Classical guitar as we know it today is based on the 1876 Torres Design as far as size and shape is concerned, in previous years, there were many different sizes and shapes including the number of strings. A Guitar could have any number of courses, and a course usually had 2-3 identical strings (like a mandolin).Strings were gut in those days, until nylon made strings a lot less messy to produce.
Acoustic guitars owe a lot to C.F. Martin, who came up with a new X-shaped bracing pattern for steel string guitar at the turn of the century.
Although Fender produced the worlds first Commercially Successful Solid Body Electric guitar in 1950, closely followed by Gibson's Les Paul Model, It had been aroundd for a few years before that.
Paul Bigsby (of Tremolo fame) and Merle travis, A country star made a solid body guitar in 1947. Its body shape was very similar to the later Les Paul, The headstock shape was almost identical to the later Fender Stratocaster, and it had a through neck body design for excellent sustain which B.C. Rich are currently claiming to have invented. Les Paul got his signature guitar in 1952, after The Telecaster (originally called the Broadcaster) came out. Gibson, however had had his number for some time as it was in 1941 that Les Paul first took his "Log" to Gibson with a body made from a railway slleper with 2 bits of guitar stuck on the side. Gibson told him to piss off as it would never be a commercial success.
In 1938/1939 a company called Slingerland, most famous for drum kits, had a catalogue including hawaiian and spanish guitars. They did do a solid bodied "spanish" guitar but did not think it popular enough to picture it in the catalogue.
Rickenbacker had the worlds first solid body electric guitar in 1931. It was a hawaiian guitar, played on the lap (not a "spanish" type so doesn't count)it was nick-named "The Frying Pan". They did however bring out a bakelite ukulele shaped instrument called the MODEL B in 1936, but I'm not sure if that was designed as a guitar or a hawaiian style lap guitar.

Unfortunately for the guitar playing world, Leo Fender was a Radio repair man and not a miusician. So when in 1954 he produced the modern contoured bodied Stratocaster, which had a vibrato (fluctuation in pitch) unit on board he called it a "Synchronised TREMOLO (fluctuation in volume)". This misnomer persists to this day. Modern versions such as the Floyd Rose Double locking version or the Wilkinson VS100 are described as tremolos.

Oh my God, look at me go on!!!!
I'd better write my own I reckon, unless you want me to spout off and you can edit it down a lot.

On a lighter note, there are also different types of style in guitar height. You have your "Armpit Merchant" e.g. The Beatles who strap the guitar in the same position as sitting down. This is the easiest method of playing standing up but it doesn't exactly look cool.

You have your "Hip-picker" the most common type. This has the guitar at hip level where it is most comfy.

Then you have your "Groin strummer" e.g. Zakk Wylde, Phil Collen who has the guitar ridiculously low so that a really lazy strum is about groin height. This is best for the Pete Townsend Patented "WINDMILL"TM strumming technique which looks very cool on stage.

Facial expressions are mostly employed so that non guitar playing fans can tell that you are A)playing with feeling and B) playing something difficult.

The foot on the monitor technique is nice and safe but there are more risky manevers you could try. One of the guitar players from Britny Fox once while singing a note and holding it, jumped up in the air, came down doing the splits, and then jumped back up from the splits and back to an upright position without the singing note faltering or suddenly raising dramatically in pitch. Don't try this at home!

Once again I bow to your superior knowlege

I've alreay submitted my feeble entry. I don't know what happens if you subsequently edit it. Hey, slap all your stuff onto a page and submit that too. Maybe the powers-that-be can combine the two... once they've come back from lunch... and cleared the backlog... or maybe not.

Guitars were called axes or boxes in the sixties, maybe earlier than that. Woody Guthry (have I spelled that correctly) had on his guitar the legend "This machine kills", I believe. Any more of this type of interesting tit-bit. Afterall, Tony Bacon's books will give you all the guitar facts you need to know - so we don't really need to repeat them do we.

You mean they ceased to be called axes after the sixties? I think not . If you want to 'talk axe', you could pop along to Si's page at http://www.h2g2.com/U25578 He has a forum where the beloved six-string is being discussed (at length ) See http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?thread=12401&forum=14680