But apparently his âsinkerâ made quite an impression on Warden. Like many other guys trying to hang on to a big league job, Ribant was clever in finding a way to get hitters out, conventional or otherwise. His âsinkerâ turned out to beâ¦the âspitballâ. Now the idea behind a âspitterâ is not some wet, gooey mess, but rather to create a âheavyâ spot on the baseball, thereby causing it to have greater wind resistance and sink dramatically when it gets to within a few feet of home plate.
When Benjamin Franklin invented his mechanical version of the instrument in 1761, he called it the armonica, based on the Italian word armonia, which means harmony. The unrelated free-reed wind instrument aeolina, today called the  harmonica , was not invented until 1821, sixty years later.
Invented around 1690, the clarinet is a single-reed woodwind instrument with a cylindrical tube. The clarinet evolved from an earlier instrument called the chalumeau, the first true single reed instrument. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremburg with the help of his son Jacob improved the chalumeau, creating a new instrument called the clarinet.