High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players. The archtop guitar is often credited to Orville Gibson, whose innovative designs led to the formation of the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd in 1902. His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance "power and quality of tone." Among the features of this instrument were a violin-style arched top and back, each carved from a single piece of wood, and thicker in the middle than at the sides; sides carved to shape from a single block of wood; and a lack of internal "braces, splices, blocks or bridges ... which, if employed, would rob the instrument of much of its volume of tone." However, Gibson was not the first to apply violin design principles to the guitar. Guitar maker A. H. Merrill, for example, patented in 1896 a very modern looking instrument "of the guitar and mandolin type ... with egg-shaped hoop or sides and a graduated convex back and top."