The musical instrument Celesta (also called “celeste”), which was invented in 1886 in Paris by Charles-Victor Mustel, has delighted the world of music for over 130 years with its unique sound, and inspires people over and over again. The Celesta became world famous for its part in the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker Suite by P.I. Tchaikovsky, who got to know the instrument in 1891 during his stay in Paris and immediately fell in love with its magical sound.

The extraordinary sound generation with felt hammers, steel sound plates and wooden resonators is still unique today and Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH is the only company in the world that manufactures the Celesta.

In the mid-1700s, Benjamin Franklin served as a delegate for colonial America and spent a great deal of time traveling to London and Paris. During this period, it was quite popular and entertaining for amateur musicians to perform on sets of "singing" or musical glasses. Franklin attended one of these concerts and was intrigued by the beauty of the sound. Almost immediately, he set to work applying the principles of wet fingers on glass to his own musical creation.

Ben Franklin completed his glass armonica in 1761. (Its name is derived from the Italian word for harmony.) He didn't simply refine the idea of musical glasses, which were played much like children at the dinner table play them today, with notes being determined by the amount of water in the glass. Rather, Franklin made chords and lively melodies possible on his new instrumental invention. //

At the time of his death in 1790, when more than 5,000 of them had been built, Ben Franklin had collected no money from his glass armonica. He refused to patent any of his inventions, saying:

"As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."