Glass harmonica the result would be musical cacophony. This modification also made it much harder to make the glass "speak", and muffled the sound. In 1975, an original armonica was acquired by the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis and put on display, albeit without its original glass bowls (they were destroyed during shipment). It was purchased through a musical instrument dealer in France, from the descendants of Mme. Brillon de Jouy, a neighbor of Benjamin Franklin's from 1777 to 1785, when he lived in the Paris suburb of Passy. Some 18th- and 19th-century specimens of the armonica have survived into the 21st century.
Glass harmonica she died at the age of 39 of pneumonia or an illness much like it. However many others, including Franklin, lived long lives. For a time the armonica achieved a genuine vogue, but like most fads, that for the armonica eventually passed. It has been claimed the sound-producing mechanism did not generate sufficient power to fill the large halls that were becoming home to modern stringed instruments, brass, woodwinds, and percussion. That the instrument was made with glass, and subject to easy breakage, perhaps did not help either. By 1820, the armonica had mostly disappeared from frequent public performance, perhaps