Nikolaus Weigel converted a folk instrument into the concert Zither and his ideas were immediately accepted.
In 1838, Nikolaus Weigel of Munich conceived the idea of adopting fixed bridges, adding additional strings, tuning them in the cycle of fifths, and chromatically fretting the fingerboard  effectively converting a rather crude folk instrument into the concert zither. His ideas were not, however, widely accepted until 1862, when luthier Max Amberger of Munich fabricated a new zither based on Weigel's design. 
