Talk:Robert F. Flemming Jr.

Much work to be done
If anyone is interested in helping, go here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/csshlhunley/info Join the group, go to files, and download "Biography of Housatonic's Robert Flemming." There's a ton of information and it's fully annotated. It just needs the sources to be verified and the article to be written. I don't think we can use that paper as a direct reference. Alexgleason (talk) 20:42, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Introduction
Hello everyone. I was inspired to create this page when I saw a Black History Month image online which listed Flemming as the inventor of the guitar. However, information on him was very hard to find, and I found many other people online asking for information, including children wanting to do a school paper on him. The biggest help in finding this information has been annotated research of a Civil War Group, found here. You must log into a Yahoo account, join the group, then go under "Files" and view "Biography of Housatonic's Robert Flemming". It's a very detailed account of the man's life, including cited sources. I have only reproduced here what I have personally verified by locating the census documents in the cited sources and linking direct URLs in my references. However, there is still very much to do, so please help! Let's create a presence for this man lost in history. Thanks. Alexgleason (talk) 01:20, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

"Invented the guitar"
It's inaccurate saying he invented "the guitar" as an instrument. He filed a patent for a type of guitar he called Euphonica. In the patent itself he references guitars multiple times as they were well known instruments that had been played for centuries before 1886. A part of the patent reads: "The body of my improved instruments is made of substantially the same shape as an ordinary guitar, and has similar wooden sides; but instead of having wooden heads, as in a guitar, it is provided with parchment or vellum heads which are stretched over said sides in any well-known manner". Flemming was well aware he was not inventing the guitar, so claiming that in the article is inaccurate so I am going to edit it accordingly.

Euphonica (instrument)
Surely, the instrument in question was not patented without an extant built exemplar. Where would it be? Stjohn1970 (talk) 17:52, 2 August 2023 (UTC)