Founded in 1894 by part-time shoe clerk and musician Orville Gibson of Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Gibson Guitar and Mandolin Company became and remains a world leader in the manufacturing of many different types of guitars.
Until the 1920s, the company specialized in manufacturing mandolins (stringed instruments with rounded bodies used in North America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in folk and popular musics, now featured by bluegrass musicians.) In the early years of his company, Gibson built all the instruments he sold by hand; each took him over a month to make.
The popularity of the mandolin faded in the 1920s, but the popularity of the guitar skyrocketed in the 1920s with the advent of the dance band. Easy to play, easy to carry and relatively inexpensive, the guitar became a staple of many styles of music, including blues, country and western, folk, jazz, and rock and roll. The Gibson Company was at the vanguard of many innovations in guitars. For example, they specialized in the arched top (or cello top) guitar, which was a response to players in dance bands who needed more volume from their guitars in order to be heard over all the other instruments. The Gibson arched top guitars, of which the L5 model became the standard to be followed, were in construction similar to the violin in some ways. They had two f'-holes like a violin, rather than one sound hole like flat top guitars.
In 1924, Gibson employee Lloyd Larr left the company in a dispute over the question of whether or not to add an electric pick-up to guitars. In 1934, with another former Gibson employee, he began the Acousti-Lectric Company which manufactured some of the first electric guitars. By 1936, Gibson added electric guitars to their production line. In 1952, they introduced the Les Paul guitar, an electric instrument commissioned by and named for the country artist Les Paul. Along with a few other models, this instrument has defined the structure and sound of electric guitars throughout the world.
In 1944, the Gibson Company was bought by the Chicago Musical Instrument Company Their franchise was greatly expanded to include large plants throughout the United States and in Japan. While these plants continue to manufacture Gibson guitars, the original Kalamazoo workshop closed in 1984.
Selected References:
pd with msc