Glass harmonica by rubbing glass or crystal goblets or bowls. The alternate instrument consisting of a set of wine glasses (usually tuned with water) is generally known in English as "musical glasses" or the "glass harp". 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. The word "hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica" is also recorded, composed of Greek roots to mean something like "harmonica to produce music for the soul by
Glass harmonica fingers dipped in water" ("hydro-" for "water", "daktul-" for "finger", "psych-" for "soul"). The "Oxford Companion to Music" mentions that this word is "the longest section of the Greek language ever attached to any musical instrument, for a reader of "The Times" wrote to that paper in 1932 to say that in his youth he heard a performance of the instrument where it was called a "hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica"." The Museum of Music in Paris displays a hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. Because its sounding portion is made of glass, the glass harmonica is a type of crystallophone. The phenomenon of rubbing a wet finger around