Who Invented The Bass Guitar?

His name was Paul Tutmarc!
It's not the first time we talk about the history of the bass guitar. But that page isn't telling much about the man who invented the bass guitar.

His name was Paul Tutmarc. He made different types of stringed instruments like electric basses, electrically amplified double basses and steel lap guitars.
He was a Seattle musician and besides inventing and playing instruments like the steel lap guitar he also taught playing and was a tenor singer.

Paul Tutmarc lived from 1896 till 1972.

Already as a child he was 'into' music, singing in a church choir. Later on he started playing guitar and banjo and as a teen he played Hawaiian style steel acoustic guitars. He also did some 'on the road' performing with a traveling Vaudeville troupe.

Once in his twenties he moved to Seattle and started working in the shipyards. After a while people knew him for his tenor voice and by the late 1920's he was performing on the radio and on stage as well.

Like many others, in the early 1930's Paul Tutmarc experimented with electricity and amplification of musical instruments. His company (Tutmarc's Audiovox Manufacturing) was one of the first to come up with an electric guitar.
His first success was the Electronic Bass Fiddle. A fretted and solid-body instrument that was meant to be played in a horizontal position.
It's this instrument that is considered to be the very first electric bass guitar.