[Excellence]

Odd sounding but not irritating.
The most recent episode of Sleepy Hollow shows a glass armonica being played. Now those thing should be outlawed.

http://www.glassarmonica.com/

[Rust Buster]

There's at least one interesting story about the glass armonica. After Benjamin Franklin invented this cintraption, he gave one to his friend Mesmer - Franz Anton - who was famous for mesmerizing. Mesmer's clinic initially was in Vienna, where he became friends with Mozart, who frequently visited Mesmer at his clinic. There were no doubt many young ladies undergoing treatments involving magnetism and mesmeric technique - it was probably an interesting milieu - Mesmer became controversial and so moved his clinic to France - it may have been here that Franklin struck up a repartee with the renowned hypnotist - in any event Franklin's glass armonica was in Mesmer's clinic and Mesmer used to play it for the patients because he thought it's music was like the music of the immortal spheres or something like that and had a soothing effect on the patients - Franklin was perhaps an acquaintance of Mozart's too - Franklin apparently described Mesmer to George Washington so compellingly that on a subsequent occasion when Franklin and Washington visited France, Washington's first words upon disembarking were, ‘take me to Mesmer!’ - the point of the story being - the founding fathers in addition to being politically savvy were a pretty interesting bunch as well - something that could perhaps allow people to realize these were or at least some were entertaining American people

[Moonmad27]

A glass armonica was featured in the Alan Rickman film Mesmer. Its weird noise fit in that film!

[BenLurkin]

“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” on the Glass Armonica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQemvyyJ—g

Sounds very magical.