Meet the American who invented the electric guitar and inspired rock 'n' roll

Learn more about Adolph Rickenbacker, the man who built the first electric guitar on Fox Nation's 'Meet the American Who ...'

Incendiary sounds shooting like fireworks off the strings of an electric guitar have defined pop music around the world for 70 years.

Credit Adolph Rickenbacker (1887-1976) for this world-wide wonder of the airwaves. The Swiss-born entrepreneur invented the electric guitar in California alongside partner George Beauchamp in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

The powerful new instrument inspired a uniquely American art form that grew to dominate global pop music culture. 

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They called it rock ‘n’ roll. 

Electric guitars "were affordable, they were loud and they were relatively easy to learn," Nicholas Toth, a professor emeritus of anthropology and cognitive science at Indiana University — and a stringed instrument collector — told Fox News Digital in an interview.

"The electric guitar was a great social equalizer."

Indiana University professor emeritus, co-chair of the Stone Age Institute, and instrument collector Nicholas Toth displays his circa-1934 Rickenbacker Frying Pan, the earliest electric guitar.  (Nicholas Toth)

The electric guitar produced more than just sound and power. It gave musicians an outlet to express every imaginable emotion — while also giving listeners the ability to feel an artist's joy, pain, elation or desperation seep into their own souls.

Beatles guitarist George Harrison, when he was just 25 years old and caught up in ungodly fame and fortune, lamented the world's love still to be realized "while my guitar gently weeps."

A young New Jersey