Anne Ford it was considered controversial for a woman to play the "masculine" viola da gamba, referred to at the time as the "viol di gambo". Ford gave a performance at Spring Gardens in 1761, "English airs". accompanying herself on the musical glasses. She also wrote a published work, "Instructions for Playing on the Musical Glasses". The instrument was comparable to the glass harp of Richard Pockrich consisting of individual glass goblets tuned with water, and preceded the 1761 mechanized armonica (Glass harmonica) invention of Benjamin Franklin and played by Marianne Davies. Ford's accomplishments risked being complicated by an infatuated lover, the
Paris in the 18th century the "Nouvelles Eccléstiastiques", first printed in 1728, which circulated the ideas of the Jansenists, a sect denounced by the church. Through the journals, the ideas and discoveries made in Paris were circulated around France and across Europe. In the beginning of the 18th century Paris had a very rudimentary postal service, which had been established in 1644 to carry letters by horseback couriers to other cities in France or abroad, but there was no postal service within the city itself; Parisians had to send a domestic or deliver the letter themselves. In 1758, a private company, called the "Petite Poste",