Tech: Music geek fun with Google Patents Search (Tom's Music Thing)

Google has introduced their Patent Search site, which looks for patents going back hundreds of years. Interested in Bob Moog's patent for the Moog 'ladder' Filter, filed in 1966 and granted in 1969? Or maybe John M. Chowning's patent for FM synthesis, which earned $20m for Stanford when Yamaha licensed it for the DX7? Here are Leon Theremin's 1925 patent for the Theremin, Leo Fender's pickup patent from 1944 (and Les Paul's), the Synthaxe, the Fender Jaguar Jazzmaster from 1959, a fantastically cool 'Electric Self-Playing Violin' from 1905, Anacleto Montanelli's Electrical Musical Instrument from 1893, the Rhodes piano from 1964, the Demo Button, a super-awesome Casio electric harmonica ("a main body having a plurality of ducts"), an 'Electronic Percussion Musical Instrument' designed by Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter from Kraftwerk in 1975....and that's just musical instruments.

Tom's Music Thing is at Music Thing, the London-based website about music gadgets (for more fun, see the best hand-clapping records ever).