infringement disagreements between National and Dobro led to a lawsuit in 1929, with Dobro suing National for $2 million in damages. Problems within National's management, as well as pressure from the deepening Great Depression, led to a production slowdown at National. This ultimately resulted in part of the company's fractured management structure organizing support for George Beauchamp's newest project: development of a fully electric guitar. By the late twenties, the idea for electrified string instruments had been around for some time, and experimental banjo, violin, and guitar pickups had been developed. George Beauchamp had experimented with electric amplification as early as 1925, but his early efforts, which used microphones, did not produce the effect he desired. Beauchamp also pursued the idea, building a one-string test guitar out of a 2X4 piece of lumber and an electric phonograph pickup. As problems at National became more apparent, Beauchamp's home experiments became more rigorous, and he began to attend night classes in electronics and collaborate with fellow National employee Paul Barth. When they finally developed a prototype electric pickup that met their satisfaction, Beauchamp asked former National shop craftsman Harry Watson to make a wooden neck and body to hold the pickup. Somebody nicknamed it the "fry-pan" because of its shape, though Rickenbacker liked to call it the pancake. The final design Beauchamp and Barth developed was an electric pickup consisting of a pair of horseshoe-shaped magnets that enclosed the pickup coil and completely surrounded the strings. Fry-pan & Electro-Spanish At the end of 1931, Beauchamp, Barth, Rickenbacker and several other individuals banded together and formed the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (elektRO-PATent-INstruments) to manufacture and distribute electrically amplified musical instruments, with an emphasis on their newly developed A-25 Hawaiian Guitar, often referred to as the "fry-pan" lap-steel electric guitar, as well as an Electric Spanish (standard) model and companion amplifiers. In the summer of 1932, Ro-Pat-In began to manufacture cast aluminum production versions of the Fry-Pan as well as a lesser number of standard Spanish Electrics also known as "Electro-Spanish" models, built from wooden bodies similar to those made in Chicago for the National Company. These instruments constitute the origin of the electric guitar by virtue of their string-driven electro-magnetic pick-ups. In 1933 the Ro-Pat-In company's name was changed to Electro String Instrument Corporation and its instruments were labeled simply as "Electro". In 1934 the name of "Rickenbacker" was added in honor of the company's