Link: Paul Bigsby

If its true it seems like Leo Fender and Les Paul borrowed a few ideas from this guy and took credit for them themselves!

I don't think Leo ever took credit for the solid body guitar, but he did make money making them. He was also the first to mass produce them. Les built his one-off "log" which was an Epiphone with a solid center block before Bigsby's solid guitar for Merle Travis. Others, notably Adolph Rickenbacher, had made solid body lap steels back in the 1930s, but as near as I have been able to determine, Paul Bigsby was the first to build a solid body "Spanish" guitar in 1946.

The Leo Fender bit I was referring to was the famous Fender Headstock design. ..it looks suspiciously similar to the Bigsby....

The headstock design was inspired by Merle Travis. Merle hated turning the guitar around when changing strings and asked Bigsby to put all the tuners on one side. The design is similar to the Stauffer guitars of the early 19th century.

Interesting Mike...The Stauffer Guitars are beautiful!

And the precursors to the Martin guitars...Martin eventually changed the top bracing from fan braces to the X brace. Before nylon they had gut strings. A set of gut strings often cost more than the guitar so steel provided a great advantage, not only in volume and tuning stability but in cost to the player. The Martin bracing system was strong enough to use steel strings and so the modern flat top was born.