It originated in the Hawaiian Islands about 1885, popularized by an Oahu youth named Joseph Kekuku, who became known for playing a traditional guitar by laying it across his lap and sliding a piece of metal against the strings to change the pitch.

Lap steel pioneers include Sol Hoopii, Bob Dunn, Jerry Byrd, Don Helms, Bud Isaacs, Leon McAuliffe, Josh Graves, Pete Kirby, and Darick Campbell.

An early solution was to build lap steel guitars with two or more necks, each providing a separate set of differently-tuned strings on a single instrument.

The problem was addressed in 1940 by adding pedals to the lap steel to change the pitch of certain strings easily, making more complex chords available on the same neck.

[2]: 11  Hawaiians learned to play fingerstyle this way, creating melodies over the full resonant tones of the open strings, and the genre became known as slack-key guitar.

[7] Following Kekuku's lead, other Hawaiians began playing in this new manner, with the guitar laid across the lap, instead of in the traditional way of holding the instrument against the body.

[11] Electrification not only allowed the lap steel guitar to be heard better, but it also meant that their resonance chambers were no longer essential, or even required.

[5] Beginning in the days of slack-key guitar in the 1850s, Hawaiian tunings came to be as closely guarded as any trade secret, handed down in families.

[19]: 131  Experimenting with different tunings was a widespread practice of the Hawaiian music of the 1930s[19]: 41  and provided templates that became a foundation for the playing style of later musicians.

[20] The addition of a sixth interval into a tuning had a dramatic effect on the steel guitar because it created numerous positions and playing pockets which were not accessible in a simple major chord.

[22] A fundamental challenge of lap steel guitar design is the inherent constraint it places on the number of chords and inversions available in any given tuning.

[19]: 34  To address the meager array available to them, some early players would simply have a second lap steel at hand, with a different tuning, ready when needed.

[19]: 36  A third strategy was to add additional necks to the same instrument, thus providing separate sets of strings that could each be tuned differently.

For example, the Oahu Music Company sold their Oahu-brand guitars and lessons to young people by door-to-door sales, canvassing nearly every city in the United States.

[29]: 29  Pioneer lap steel players between 1915 and 1930 included Sol K. Bright Sr., Tau Moe, Dick McIntire, Sam Ku West and Frank Ferera.

[2]: 19  Tin Pan Alley obliged the demand for Hawaiian songs by publishing a large supply of hapa haole music.

He was a trendsetter in his use of the metal-bodied National Tricone guitar and, later, the Rickenbacker Bakelite (see photo above) and Dickerson electric steels.

[19]: 54  Born in 1908 in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, he quit school in the eighth grade to join traveling musical troupes.

[23] Wills in turn hired and nurtured innovative players, who subsequently influenced the genre, including Leon McAuliffe, Noel Boggs, and Herb Remington.

[23] Due to the need to have different chords or voicings available, the design of the lap steel and the way it was played underwent continual change as the style evolved.

[41] Honky-tonk singers who used a lap steel guitar in their musical arrangements included Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce.

[2]: 57  Other classic country recordings featuring Helms' work were "Walkin' After Midnight" (Patsy Cline) and "Blue Kentucky Girl" (Loretta Lynn).

[44] The dobro never became popular with blues players, who generally prefer the National guitar, which has a similar resonator design but uses a metal body.

As a member of Roy Acuff's "Smoky Mountain Boys", in 1939 his dobro playing on the Grand Ole Opry helped define country music in its formative years.

[55]: 3 The expense of building multiple necks on each guitar made lap steels unaffordable for most players and a more sophisticated solution was needed.

[57] Bigsby, working alone in his shop, made guitars for leading players of the day, including Joaquin Murphey and Speedy West.

[8][59]: 190  Dozens of instrumentalists rushed to get pedals on their steel guitars to imitate the unique bending notes they heard in Isaacs' play.

[59]: 191  Even though the instrument had been available for over a decade before this recording, the pedal steel guitar emerged as a crucial element in country music after the success of this song.

[19]: 2  In accordance, the non-pedal lap steel became largely obsolete, with only pockets of devotees remaining in country and Hawaiian music.

[23] Speaking about the pedal steel in a 1972 interview, Jerry Byrd said: "Mechanically, there were a lot of bugs, you couldn't keep them in tune, and that drove me crazy"[63]: 46  ...