1. Which of the Following Best Describes the Author S Purpose in Writing This Passage?

The desire to increase the sound of the guitar existed long before the development of electrical amplifiers and speakers. Musical performances in the 19th century were characterized by ever-larger concert settings and ensembles. Musicians needed louder and more powerful instruments, which became possible by using new materials and designs.
The introduction of steel strings in the 19th century meant not only greater volume, but greater tension on instruments. The traditional flattop guitar began to change in size and shape as a steel-string instrument. In addition, an entirely different design emerged, the stronger—and louder—archtop. /
George Beauchamp's patent for the Rickenbacker Frying Pan, filed in 1934 and issued in 1937.
In the 1920s, as public dance music became more popular and the infant recording industry required high volume to capture a musical performance, guitar makers increased their efforts to develop ever-louder guitars. Some people continued experimenting with larger sizes and metal bodies; other innovators started to focus on electricity as a possible aid.
By the end of the 1930s, electronic amplification proved to be one of the most successful innovations for building a louder guitar, despite the misgivings of some traditionalists about the new technology. Country and jazz guitarists were among the first to champion the electric sound. Then in the 1940s and 1950s, players and makers began building Spanish-style electric guitars with solid wooden bodies, which led to new designs and new sounds.
A Louder Guitar
The history of the electric guitar's development comprises a legacy of invention and innovation dating back well before the 20th century. Particularly since the introduction of the modern six-string Spanish-style guitar around 1800, there has been continuous interaction among guitar players and makers seeking ever-greater volume for their instruments.
By the 1850s, C. F. Martin had developed "X-bracing" to reinforce the guitar's body, as well as other innovationsleading to a new American flattop guitar design. In the 1890s, Orville Gibson's carved-body guitar not only increased its volume, it also set standards for instrument makers in the early 20th century and blazed the trail for the archtop guitar.
The quest for a louder guitar intensified during the 1920s with the advent of big band music, phonograph recordings, and commercial radio. To compete in these new markets, guitar makers began not only building larger flat top and archtop guitars, but increasingly experimenting with different materials and designs.
John Dopyera of the National String Instrument Corporation took the idea of acoustic amplification to its limit, designing a steel-body guitar with banjo-type resonator-amplifiers built into the top.
The Electrified Guitar
The idea of using electricity to create louder string instruments already existed by the end of the 19th century. But it was only during the 1920s and 1930s that engineers, makers, and musicians began to solve some of the challenges of electronic amplification.
Around 1931 George Beauchamp, working with Adolph Rickenbacker, produced an electromagnetic pickup in which a current passed through a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet, creating a field which amplified the strings' vibrations. Introduced on a lap-steel known as the Frying Pan, the pickup made this guitar the first commercially viable electric.
By the late 1930s other makers and players adapted the new technology to the more traditional Spanish-style hollow-body wooden guitars, but were troubled with distortions, overtones, and feedback—the amplification of vibrations in the body of the instrument as well as in the strings. Inventors began trying to address these sound difficulties by experimenting with solid, rather than hollow, guitar bodies. The Slingerland company commercially introduced a Spanish solid-body electric guitar in 1939. Around 1940, on an instrument dubbed "the Log," guitarist and inventor Les Paul mounted strings and pickups on a solid block of pine to minimize body vibrations. During the 1940s, Paul Bigsby and Leo Fender also began experimenting with Spanish-style solid-body guitar design.
During the early years of its existence, the electric guitar's viability as a "true" instrument was frequently debated. The instrument's detractors often claimed it did not produce a pure, "authentic" musical sound. Country and jazz musicians, most notably Charlie Christian, were among its first defenders, championing the electric guitar's louder sound and ability to compete with other melody instruments in ensemble performances.
Electric guitar pioneers of the 1930s and 1940s included artists such as jazzmen Eddie Durham and Oscar Moore, country pickers Noel Boggs and Merle Travis, and blues masters T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters. All experimented with the instrument's tonal and harmonic possibilities. In the process, other musicians, makers, and audiences started to pay attention to the new electric sound.

HOW GUITARS WORK

Acoustic Guitar

The acoustic (non-electrified) guitar is the centuries-old ancestor of the electric guitar. The instrument shown here is an example of the modern Spanish-style six-string acoustic guitar that was developed around 1800. Steel strings were introduced in the 19th century to replace traditional gut strings.
Sound is produced by striking the strings and making them vibrate. The energy of the vibrating strings is transferred to the soundboard through the bridge. The guitar's hollow body amplifies the sound of the vibrating strings. The pitch of the vibrating strings depends partly on the mass, tension, and length of the strings.
On steel-string guitars, the lower strings are thicker. Tuning the strings changes the tension; the tighter the string, the higher the pitch. Pressing down on the frets changes the amount of the string that is free to vibrate; the closer the fret is to the sound hole, the shorter the vibrating string, the higher the pitch.
Electric-Acoustic Guitar

Guitar makers and players have always searched for ways to increase the instrument's volume. Electronic amplification was one of the most successful innovations for building a louder guitar. Some of the earliest electronic experiments from the 1920s and 1930s involved simply attaching a pickup to an acoustic guitar.
An electric-acoustic guitar is also called a hollow-body electric guitar
Pickups:
Electric guitar pioneers tried a variety of ways to pick up the instrument's sound and amplify it. George Beauchamp and Paul Barth developed the first successful electromagnetic pickup system; it was applied to the Rickenbacker Frying Pan guitar, marketed in 1932.
Today, pickups are electromagnets mounted under the guitar strings. They sense the strings' vibrations and convert them into electrical signals that travel through a cable to the amplifier to increase the sound. There are two kinds of pickups: single-coil and double-coil, or humbucking. The latter give a fuller sound.
Solid-Body Electric Guitar
As makers and players continued to investigate ways of increasing the volume of the electric guitar throughout the 1940s, it became clear that a solid body was a key design feature.
In a hollow guitar, the string's vibrations are transferred to the guitar's body. Since the pickup cannot tell string and body vibrations apart, the signal can be jumbled.
In a solid-body guitar, the great mass of the solid body has minimal response to the vibrations of the strings. So the pickup "picks up" a cleaner signal of the strings' pure tone.
When the solid-body guitar is plugged into an amplifier, the electrical impulses created by the pickups are converted into sound by the amplifier. Special-effects boxes, such as the fuzz box that creates a distorted sound, can change the signal from the pickups, which changes the sound that the amplifier produces.
Hawaiian, or Steel, Guitar
Introduced in the United States around 1900, the Hawaiian, or steel, guitar differed from the standard Spanish-style guitar in that it was designed to be played horizontally with a sliding steel bar, a much easier technique than fingering the strings. The lap-steel and pedal-steel are variations of this instrument.
The ease of learning and playing the Hawaiian guitar made it popular with both users and teachers. Its alluring effect of sliding between notes endeared it especially to country and blues musicians.
Hawaiian guitars became the first and most popular style of electric guitars in the 1930s. The electric models were built out of solid wood, a type of construction that was not commercially adapted to Spanish-style guitars until the 1950s.