Who invented slide guitar?

Slide guitar is an outgrowth of a very primitive instrument. Slaves would tack a piece of wire to a wall, jam some wood under it near the nail ends to raise it a bit and give it tension, and then 'fret' the wire with a jacknife or other tool.... at least, that's what I remember, and it's pretty well backed up in a GN article [urlhttp://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=310]History and Origin of Slide Guitar in the Blues[/url].

Resonator guitars were invented by two brothers, John and Rudy Dopyera, in the 1920s. They started a company - DOBRO (from DOpyera BROthers), that's still making them today.

Thanks for the info, very interesting!

There's also a theory that it came from the other direction: from India, through Hawaii (during King Kalakaua's time) and then into the U.S., perhaps by the many traveling Hawaiian music bands in the early 1900s. Then again it might be one of those things where 2 unrelated people or groups come up with the exact same thing, unaware of the other.

I know that National are well known for their resonators,(love the one on Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms'!) but do they make other instruments too?

From what I remember, the resonater was an attempt to amplify the guitar before microphones.

Yeah, a big problem the guitar suffered was that it really wasn't anything more than a rythm instrument in band situations. It would get burried under the horn section, ect. The nylon strings and body just weren't built for volume.

The modern dreadnought style guitar fought this problem by strengthening and enlarging the body to use steel strings on it that increased the volume. Resonators were a step forward in this, rather than using the vibrating top to make the sound, they used resonator combs built into the body. And of course, the next step was electric guitar. The rest you probably allready know...

cool stuff!