Without the invention of the solid-body electric guitar, there never would've been rock or, gasp! alternative music. The electric guitar opened the door for the sounds that we now dub alternative.

The actual invention of the electric solid-body guitar is credited to Les Paul. This is how it all started for him. In 1928 Les Paul was playing guitar for a small gathering of people in the country. Many of the people in attendance were beginning to complain that the music wasn't loud enough. Mr. Paul was singing through a telephone hooked to a car stereo, but the guitar wasn't loud enough. He decided to just jam a phonograph needle in the top half of the guitar right at the bridge, he then held the other half of the telephone underneath the guitar, and the sound somehow got much louder.

Les Paul started working on his idea for the solid-body electric guitar in the 1930's. By 1941, he had actually split an arch-top Epiphone in half lengthwise, and bolted both sides to a solid wood block. He called his creation "the log"; others called it "a broom stick with a pickup on it," because that's basically what it was.

What we now know as alternative rock music, we would have never known, had it not been for the invention of the solid-body electric guitar. It can be said that the electric guitar, and modern rock and roll are completely inseparable. However this appears to be somewhat of a one way street. Without rock and roll, you still would've had some form of the electric guitar in existence, but without the electric guitar, we never would've had rock and roll.

this reason, and even if only for this reason, the electric guitar should be considered an important ancestor of modern rock and roll (alternative) music.