Kay Musical Instrument Company Kay Musical Instrument Company Kay Musical Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer of the United States, in operation from the 1930s until the 1960s. Kay was established in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois, by Henry Kay Kuhrmeyer, from the assets of the former Stromberg-Voisinet (founded as Groeschel Mandolin Company in 1890). Kay offered their first electric guitar in 1936 — five years after the Rickenbacker "Frying pan", and the same year as the Gibson ES-150. However, the Kuhrmeyer-owned Stromberg-Voisinet brand had produced the Stromberg Electro even earlier, in 1928, making the short-lived model arguably the first commercial electric guitar. The
Musical Instrument Museum (Brussels) Musical Instrument Museum (Brussels) The Musical Instruments Museum (MIM) (, ) is a music museum in central Brussels, Belgium. It is part of the Royal Museums for Art and History and internationally renowned for its collection of over 8,000 instruments. The MIM collection was created in 1877 and was originally attached to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with the purpose of demonstrating early instruments to students. It consisted of a hundred Indian instruments given to King Leopold II of Belgium by Rajah Sourindro Mohun Tagore in 1876 and the collection of the celebrated Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, purchased by the