Who invented the electric guitar? Who cares? Let them argue it into the middle of next week. What matters is that it was invented … and from 1932 to 1942, found perhaps its greatest expression in the Hawaiian lap steel guitar.

For centuries guitar players have striven to make their instruments louder. From bigger sound boxes to steel strings to resonators and finally to the first electric pickup, the guitar was adapted to make itself heard.

But the lap steel was different. It didn't just make an acoustic sound larger, its solid-body gave an artist the opportunity to experiment with an entirely new tone and unheard-of sustain.

Why the lap steel? Well, Hawaiian music was at its peak of popularity. This unique indigenous music had been introduced to mainland USA at the 1915 Pan-Pacific Expo in San Francisco.

And if there was any instrument in need of amplification, the Hawaiian lap guitar was surely it. At that time, string groups and orchestras employed the piercing banjo, while guitarists used the huge dreadnought or steel-bodied resonator.

But Hawaiian guitar, since it was played on the lap (and thus its sound carrying up not out), could hardly be heard.

The first electric lap steel - the Rickenbacher Frying Pan - was simplicity itself: a small round body, a single pickup, a neck, a peghead with tuning machines. It looked, and in fact it was, unlike any other guitar ever created.

Indeed, the period of 1932 to 1942 - when all musical instrument production was halted for the WW II war effort - was to see some of the best-sounding, most visually exciting guitars of all time: the Rickenbacher Model B and the Silver Hawaiian, the Gibson EH models, the National New Yorker, just to name a few.

Of course, this historical disertation would be incomplete without the inclusion of some choice words about the pedal steel guitar.