Well, it turns out this was a fairly silly and fun project! What I hadn't realized was that the students had to write a song or poem about their inventor, and make a poster with facts and pictures. Here's the DD's composition:

THE EPIC SAGA OF THE GREAT AND MIGHTY ACCORDION

In eighteen-twenty-two in Germany
A man named Friedrich Buschmann
Patented the hand-aeoline,
Which was a little box-thing
Comprised of bellows and a keyboard
Which one squeezed to make a sound—
Something quite akin to music,
As his audiences found!

The year was eighteen-twenty-nine,
And in fair Vienna-town,
A Mr. Cyrillus Damian
Got a patent of his own.
He called it the accordion,
And, like that German fellow's,
There was a keyboard on one side.
The other hand worked the bellows.

(And we must mention Charles Wheatstone,
Who, in eighteen-forty-four,
Patented the concertina,
But of this I'll say no more.)

Let us proceed to the U.S.A.,
In early eighteen-fifty-four,
On the thirteenth of January,
In fair Philadelphia.
Anthony Faas had a vision
Of a new accordion.
He'd changed the sound and keyboard
And the patent he had won!

Never before this winter day
Had an American
Gained a patent for this instrument.
Well, there's a first for everything!
Faas' improvements did not survive
And are not used today,
But the accordion is still revered
As a worthy instrument to play!