There is an Irish e-bay seller called patentattorneypaul selling copies of the 1955 Les Paul guitar patent document on e-bay.co.uk. This document is freely available on www.google.com/patents, here is the link if you want to download it yourself:

Although Leo Fender was the first to mass produce the electric bass guitar in the 1950s, Seattle musician Paul Tutmarc could be considered its true inventor.

Born in 1896, Tutmarc started playing Hawaiian-steel guitar at the age of 15, and was soon working as a touring musician. In 1917 Tutmarc arrived at Seattle, began work in the shipyards and raised a family. By 1926 Tutmarc was singing on the local radio station and on the stage, and by 1931 he was teaching guitar from a studio in down-town Seattle.

SOLIDOBODIES, The 50 YEAR GUITAR WAR focuses on the competitive influences that have made the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul the most popular electric guitars during the rock era. This is the story of their design & sounds, the people behind the instruments and the battle for rock 'n' roll supremacy that began more than a half-century ago. 

The Six String Nation guitar is a unique custom instrument made by luthier George Rizsany. It is made from 64 items and each one represents an important aspect of Canadian history or culture.

It contains pieces of historical wood: like part of Wayne Gretzky’s hockey stick and Nancy Greene’s childhood skis. There is also an ammolite carved buffalo skull from the Blood Tribe, as well as animal bone/tusks, minerals, metals and wooden bits from historic buildings.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has announced that it is has aquired the Kaman Music Corportation (KMC). KMC owns Ovation Guitars, Genz Benz Amps, Hamer guitars and is the worldwide distributor of Takamine brand acoustic guitars.

KMC is a subsiduary of the Kaman Corporation founded by Charles Kaman, whose experience in areospace composite materials technology led to the Ovation roundback guitar. The deal was done for around $117 million.

You can now browse for guitar shops and services on guitar-list using Google maps. Go to the shops and services page and choose your country, next each of your country's states or provinces is a map link which will take you to a Google map.

You can zoom or pan the map, and even look at a satellite image, with the guitar shop markers overlayed. (In the language of the internet 2.0 this is a mashup of the guitar-list database with Google maps!)