Don’t Stuff Your Cello in the Overhead Bin

The 34th inventor in my Inventor Portraits series was a man named Ernest Nussbaum. An amateur musician and professional civil engineer, Ernest wanted a cello that he could travel with and practice playing on the road. So he designed the Prakticello.

Here’s what it looks like next to a full-sized cello:

You can see that it doesn’t have the full body of a cello. It just has the parts that touch the body when played, and the parts that hold the strings. So it doesn’t resonate as loudly as a proper cello and wouldn’t be used for performance. But for practice, it does the job.

Fully dismantled, it stows away in a case small enough to easily fit in an overhead bin:

When I met Ernest, he was 82 years old and still making every Prakticello himself in his garage, spending around 40 hours on each one:

He told me:

Ernest had been making collapsible instruments since the early 1980s. The Washington Post wrote about Ernest back in 1983, under the headline “Cello To Go.” Back then he offered a model called the Travielo which included a battery-powered amplifier. But eventually he focused on just the non-amplified Prakticello.

According to a 2010 NPR story, Ernest sold about 450 Prakticellos to amateur and professional players. His customers included Yo-Yo Ma and other renowned performers.

He also made collapsible violins and violas, but those weren’t as popular because, well, they’re pretty small and portable already.

Want to see how a Prakticello is assembled? Here’s a video I made with Ernest about 12 years ago demonstrating and discussing his invention:

Ernest died in 2017. But in 2013 he passed his business along to a colleague who continues making Prakticellos to this day. If you’re interested in such a thing, you can check out his website for more.

Thanks for reading another edition of the newsletter! I wanted to ask you, as long as I’m writing: How are you doing? Like, really, how are you doing? Everything going okay? I just feel like I haven’t checked in with you lately. I know life can be stressful sometimes. Just want to make sure you’re okay. You can always drop me a line any time.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back in your Inbox soon!

Thanks,

David