The Oxford Companion to Music mentions that this word is 'the longest section of the Greek language ever attached to any musical instrument, for a reader of The Times wrote to that paper in 1932 to say that in his youth he heard a performance of the instrument where it was called a hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica.' The Museum of Music in Paris displays a hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. The word 'hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica' is also recorded, composed of Greek roots to mean something like 'harmonica to produce music for the soul by fingers dipped in water' ( hydro- for 'water', daktul- for 'finger', psych- for 'soul'). The unrelated free-reed wind instrument aeolina, today called the ' harmonica', was not invented until 1821, sixty years later. When Benjamin Franklin invented his mechanical version of the instrument in 1761, he called it the armonica, based on the Italian word armonia, which means 'harmony'. The alternative instrument consisting of a set of wine glasses (usually tuned with water) is generally known in English as 'musical glasses' or the ' glass harp'. The name 'glass harmonica' (also 'glass armonica', 'glassharmonica' harmonica de verre, harmonica de Franklin, armonica de verre, or just harmonica in French Glasharmonika in German harmonica in Dutch) refers today to any instrument played by rubbing glass or crystal goblets or bowls.

The rims of wine glasses filled with water are rubbed by the player's fingers to create the notes.

A glass harp, an ancestor of the glass armonica, being played in Rome.

Vintage opera glasses paris