During the past couple of hundred years, the durable little instrument has garnered an impressive number of descriptive names: tin sandwich, harp, mouth organ, harpoon, Mississippi saxophone, French harp or, simply harmonica.

The harmonica is ubiquitous in history. American folklore has it that Abraham Lincoln carried a harmonica. “Douglas has a brass band with him in Peoria (Ill.) but this will do for me,” says Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln, waving a harmonica during his 1856 Senate campaign against Steven Douglas.

The instrument provided solace around campfires in both Union and Confederate camps during the Civil War. Legend has it that the somewhat disparate Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid both played. Jesse James’ brother, Frank, was reportedly saved from a bullet by a shirt-pocket harmonica.

For an instrument that initially targeted its audience in the 19th century folk music of Austria, “the harmonica has become transcendent, arguably the most popular instrument in history,” according to one of the few good books on the subject, Harmonicas, Harps and Heavy Breathers: The Evolution of the People’s Instrument by Kim Field. “It has been to both poles, down the Amazon and to the summit of Mt. Everest. In its most spectacular field trip, it became the first instrument to serenade us from outer space (Astronaut Wally Schirra on the 1965 Gemini VI flight).”

Millions of harmonicas have been created. Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann is credited as the inventor of the harmonica in 1821, but other inventors developed similar instruments around the same time, perhaps even earlier.

In the early 1800s, many of the early harmonica makers were German clock builders. In their spare time, they made the simple popular diatonic scale harmonica primarily used today, but also designed and fashioned other elaborate “Mundharmonikas,” such as a 2-foot long 48-chord harmonica.

“Back before the wars, there were over 200 German businesses making or involved in assembling harmonicas,” says Harlan Crain, collector and founder of Harmonica Collectors International (HCI).

Crain has the largest collection of harmonicas in the world — more than 6,000 harmonicas (“6,119, but who’s counting,” Crain says). Each harmonica is displayed in shelving that makes access easy.” His wife, Donna, is very accommodating … and relieved he doesn’t collect pianos.

Crain knows every major collector, harmonica company factory representatives and even counts contemporary musicians among his friends. His many fellow collectors acknowledge his as the largest collection. Word gets around.

As such, you never know who’s going to drop by his St. Louis suburban home.

On Saturday, March 10, Ozzie Osbourne; his son, Jack; and daughter, Kelly, dropped by Crain’s house to see his harmonica collection, as part of the second-year episode of Ozzie and Jack’s World Detour.

“He’s quite a character,” Crain said of Osbourne. “You know you see or hear on TV about Oz smoking crazy stuff, but here he was clear, polite and as nice a guy you’d ever want to meet. He’s got a good sense of humor. He tried playing, oh 30 or 40 of these harmonicas… he played some blues’ riffs. It was a real good time.”

Crain has ushered several other musicians and collectors during his 23 years of collecting and counts many of them as longtime friends.

In Crain’s collections are harmonicas made of wood and bamboo, metal, glass and tin. Some are enameled and engraved, sport brass trumpets, bells and horns. There are bass, chromatic, diatonic and chord harmonicas. It’s cacophony of design.

“What I like are all the different designs and craftsmanship that went into making a harmonica,” Crain says. “I appreciate the craftsmanship, especially in the older harmonicas … those were all hand carved. The engraving, itself within the harmonica plates, can be very ornamental and sometimes over excessive. But, I love the history, I have harmonicas and harmonica boxes – which is another whole thing – with pictures of Roosevelt, Lindbergh, Mark Twain. The boxes, themselves, are works of art.”

Crain said a box will increase the harmonica’s value by “20-50 percent, depending on the harp.”And then, there’s the never-ending extremes of human ingenuity.

“I have harmonicas shaped like fish, ladies’ vanity harps with mirrors, harmonicas with bells, horns, whistles, and kazoos; harmonicas that were used as candy containers, harmonicas with magnifying glasses, a harmonica shaped like Babe Ruth’s Musical bat given away at Yankee Stadium in the 1920s, walking sticks with harmonicas (usually requiring white spats and a jaunty derby), and even harmonicas that operate on the same principle as a player piano, with the paper scored reel which the player turned on a crank while blowing.

“I have one harmonica, called the Coin Harp, which had a cylinder where you could hide about five nickels, there are Art Deco harps; I have semi-precious stones in some harmonicas.”

He has harmonicas made in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Austria, Korea, Brazil, Japan, China, Sweden, India, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and the United States.

Crain particularly enjoys finding early harmonicas from the mid-1850s to the 1930s. Those years are the heart of his collection. “Probably 80 percent of my harmonicas, maybe more than that, are German- and Austrian-based.

One of Crain’s favorites is a chord harp that is good for little else than playing God Save the King.

He has a Chinese instrument, a Sheng, which may be the patriarch of all harmonicas. It is made simply of bamboo reeds and tubes. From there, he has mostly the more common Western diatonic, chromatic and tremelo harmonicas.

The diatonics are the most popular harmonica sold today. Most common is the 10-hole diatonic used by blues, folk, rock and country players. The diatonic harmonica doesn’t have all the notes in the scale and relies on bends, which flatten the desired note.

A chromatic harmonica has a button on the side which enables the player to splay the normal major scale, and with the button depressed, gives the player all the half-steps or notes in between. The chromatic is used by classical and jazz players.

The tremelo harmonica is distinct in that it has two reeds per note. It is a more finely-fretted instrument with upper and lower chambers. In a tremolo harmonica the two reeds are tuned slightly off a reference pitch, one slightly sharp and the other slight flat. This tuning gives the harmonica a wavering or warbling effect.

Due to the versatility of the instrument, the harmonica has become a major player in blues, jazz, rock and roll and classical music. “Number one, there are many major works – for example, more than a dozen concertos (for the harmonica),” according to Robert Bonfiglio, known as the “Paganini of the harmonica.”

“Number two, the harmonica can do all sorts of things other wind instruments can’t – it can play octaves, chords, double stops and it can play pianissimo in the high register. More than that, you have total control over the sound – it’s literally in your hands.”

The “golden era” for harmonicas was in the 1920s and 1930s. “That’s when the tremelo harmonica was the most popular,” Crain said