Old pickup question

[Alabam]

I saw this article in Ourstate magazine. It mentions a single coil for each string which i don`t think is right, probably means a seperate magnet for each string.
Here`s the link and a scanned pic of the magazine article.

http://www.physics.ncsu.edu/news/phy...ts_guitar.html

[David Schwab]

That's interesting. I've never heard of the guy. They are kind of implying that's the first pickup, but he's nine years after George Beauchamp and Paul Barth invented the horseshoe pickup used on the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.

[Chadheckler1]

Weren't there electro-mechanical organs that had a pickup per note? I am pretty sure that the Wurlitzer did but it was invented way after 1940...if you Wiki Hamond it says 1934... I could see the someone wanting to try it on a guitar back then...

[David Schwab]

Beauchamp did his in 1931, and got the patent number in 1937. By 1936 there were a bunch of electromagnetic pickups around, and several patents. There may have been some preceding '31 too.

But like with anything, many of these were parallel discoveries, like the whole Les Paul/Bigsby/Fender solid body thing, and obviously the whole concept of using a pickup coil is a older than electric guitars.