Born 117 Years Ago in California, the Inventor Who Forever Changed Popular Music With an Instrument He Never Learned To Play

On this day (August 10) in 1909, Leo Fender was born in Anaheim, California. He is best remembered as the founder of Fender, the brand that has produced some of the world’s most iconic and widely played guitars and basses. While he was not a guitarist, he developed the first commercially available solid-body electric guitar with the Broadcaster, which later became the Telecaster.

Fender wasn’t without musical talent. When he was young, he played piano and saxophone. However, his interest quickly drifted away from music and toward electronics. As a teenager, he became enthralled with a radio his uncle had built out of spare parts in his automotive electronic repair shop. Soon, he was repairing radios in a shop in his parents’ house.

In the late 1930s, he and his wife opened Fender Radio Service in Fullerton, California. The main focus of the shop was radio repair. However, he also built custom PA systems. Fender also began building amplifiers for the lap steel guitars and electrified acoustic guitars that were showing up in greater numbers across the Southern California music scene.

Leo Fender’s First Guitars

Before Leo Fender started building electric guitars, he worked with Doc Kauffman, a pedal steel player, to build electric steel guitars in his radio show. They also built amplifiers to go with them and sold them as a kit. According to Guitar.com, Kauffman pulled out of their partnership in 1946. Fender kept moving forward with new employees, though.

Fender wasn’t the only person building electric instruments at the time. The Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company had made two successful electric guitars in the 1930s. Their Electro-Spanish guitars were the first commercially available electric instruments designed to be played like a conventional guitar. They were both semi-hollow body instruments.

Leo Fender wanted to expand on the idea. He wanted to create an electric guitar that was reliable and comfortable to play. Moreover, he wanted to produce a guitar that wouldn’t feed back at high volumes, which was an issue with hollow-body instruments at the time.

The Telecaster

Leo Fender completed his prototype solid-body guitar in the late 1940s. Then, in 1950. Fender released the Esquire, which featured a single pickup. A year later, the company released the Broadcaster, which resembled the Esquire but had two pickups. The Broadcaster overshadowed its predecessor and became one of the most popular guitars in history. Unfortunately, the Gretsch instrument company had already used the name Broadcaster for one of its models. As a result, Fender changed the guitar’s name to Telecaster.

Three years after the release of the Esquire, Fender released the Stratocaster, an upgraded version of the Telecaster with three pickups and two cutaways that allowed easier access to the higher frets.

[RELATED: 3 of the Greatest Guitarists Who Ever Shredded With a Fender Stratocaster]

More than seven decades later, the Fender name is stamped on the headstocks of guitars played by everyone from beginners to elite musicians.

Featured Image by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

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