The history
2,500 years from one plucked string to the grand piano, the player piano and the digital keyboard.
For centuries, keyboards could not play both soft and loud: a harpsichord plucks its strings the same way however hard you press. Around 1700 in Florence, Bartolomeo Cristofori made hammers strike the strings, and the harder you pressed, the louder it played. Over the next 200 years makers added faster actions, iron frames, crossed strings and 88 keys, and then pianos learned to play themselves, go electric and go digital.
3rd century BCE
Keyboard instrument
Ctesibius's hydraulis, Alexandria
1584
Equal temperament worked out accurately
Zhu Zaiyu, China
1700
Piano on record
Bartolomeo Cristofori, Florence
1720
Oldest surviving piano
Cristofori, now at the Met, New York
1821
Double escapement action
Sébastien and Pierre Érard
1825
One-piece cast-iron frame
Alpheus Babcock, Boston
1900
Piano made in Japan
Torakusu Yamaha, Hamamatsu
1983
Clavinova digital piano
Yamaha, Japan
550 BCE – 1700
People learn how strings make notes, and build keyboards that blow pipes, touch strings with metal blades or pluck them with quills. None of them can play both loud and soft.
530 BCE
c. 6th century BCE (attributed)
A monochord is a single string stretched over a box, with a bridge you can slide. Halve the string's length and it plays a note an octave higher, vibrating twice as fast. Legend credits Pythagoras, but historians say the ideas are older, going back to Mesopotamia.
Why it mattered. Every piano string follows the same rule: shorter, tighter and thinner strings play higher notes.
250 BCE
3rd century BCE
Ctesibius built the hydraulis, a water organ. Hand pumps pushed air into a tank where water kept the pressure steady, and pressing a key let the air blow through a pipe. It is the earliest known keyboard instrument.
Why it mattered. The idea of a row of keys, one for each note, started here, almost 2,000 years before the piano.
1397
1397 (first mention)
In 1397 a lawyer in Padua wrote that a man named Hermann Poll claimed to have invented the clavicembalum. In a harpsichord each key lifts a small quill or plectrum that plucks a string. The oldest complete one that survives was made in 1521.
Why it mattered. A plucked note sounds equally loud however hard you press the key, the problem the piano was invented to solve.
1404
1404 (first mention)
The clavichord is first mentioned in a German poem of 1404. Each key pushes a small brass blade called a tangent up against a string, and it stays there while you hold the key. Players could even make the note wobble, but it was so quiet it only suited a small room.
Why it mattered. It let players control loudness with their fingers, but the sound was far too soft for a concert.
1584
The Chinese prince and scholar Zhu Zaiyu worked out an accurate mathematical way to split the octave into twelve equal steps and published it in 1584. His work got little official recognition in his lifetime.
Why it mattered. Equal steps are how pianos are tuned today, so music sounds right in every key.
1700 – 1760
In Florence, Bartolomeo Cristofori makes strings sing with hammers, so the harder you press, the louder the note. A magazine article spreads the idea to Germany.
1700
1700 (inventory)
Cristofori came to Florence in 1688 to look after the instruments of Prince Ferdinando de' Medici. A Medici inventory of 1700 lists his 'arpicembalo' of new invention that 'makes the soft and the loud'. Instead of plucking, it hit the strings with small hammers.
Why it mattered. For the first time, how hard you pressed a key decided how loud the note was.
1711
The writer Scipione Maffei published an enthusiastic article about Cristofori's invention in the Giornale de' letterati d'Italia, with a drawing of the hammer mechanism. It was translated into German in 1725. Some musicians of the time still found the new sound too soft and dull.
Why it mattered. The article carried the idea across the Alps, where the next makers learned it.
1720
Three Cristofori pianos survive, from 1720, 1722 and 1726. The oldest is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and has 54 keys, against 88 on a modern piano. Its full name was gravicembalo col piano e forte, a harpsichord with soft and loud, later shortened to piano. It already has an escapement, which lets the hammer fly free after it strikes, and dampers that silence a string when you let go.
Why it mattered. The basic ideas inside every piano today are already in this instrument.
1747
1730s–7 May 1747
Silbermann built his first piano in 1732. Bach complained that its treble was weak and its keys were hard to play, so Silbermann improved it. On 7 May 1747 Bach visited Frederick the Great in Potsdam and played the king's Silbermann pianos; by 1749 he was even helping to sell one.
Why it mattered. Winning over the greatest keyboard player of the age helped the new instrument spread.
1760 – 1830
Workshops in Augsburg, Vienna, London and Paris race to build lighter, louder, bigger pianos for Mozart, Beethoven and a growing public.
1777
October 1777
Mozart, then 21, visited Stein's workshop and wrote to his father about the pianos. He praised their escapement, saying that without it you cannot avoid jangling and vibration after a note. Stein's light, quick 'German' action became the Viennese piano action. Mozart's own piano, bought around 1782, was by Stein's Viennese rival Anton Walter.
Why it mattered. A good escapement lets the hammer bounce away cleanly, so the string can ring.
1794
1789–1794
The Scottish maker John Broadwood took over Burkat Shudi's harpsichord firm. In 1789, at the pianist Dussek's suggestion, he stretched his grand piano beyond five octaves, and by 1794 to six full octaves. English grands had a heavier action and a bigger sound than Viennese ones.
Why it mattered. Composers wrote for the notes that makers added, and makers added notes for composers.
1794
Nannette Stein grew up in her father's workshop in Augsburg and carried it on after he died in 1792. In 1794 she moved the business to Vienna with her husband. Her firm grew to make 50 to 65 grand pianos a year, and she was a close friend of Beethoven.
Why it mattered. One of the leading piano makers of Beethoven's Vienna was a woman.
1800
Hawkins, an English engineer living in Philadelphia, patented a piano with its strings running down to the floor, the keyboard raised above them and a complete iron frame. Thomas Jefferson bought one.
Why it mattered. An upright piano fits against a wall, so a piano could fit in an ordinary home.
1817
1803–1818
In October 1803 Beethoven got a grand piano from the Érard firm in Paris and loved it at first. In December 1817 Thomas Broadwood sent him a six-octave grand from London. It arrived in Vienna about seven months later, and Beethoven kept it for the rest of his life.
Why it mattered. Beethoven's music pushed pianos to be louder and wider, and makers followed.
1826
24 January 1826
The Viennese maker Conrad Graf lent Beethoven a 6½-octave piano. From the note D upwards it had four strings for each key, not three, to make it louder for the deaf composer. It is now at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.
Why it mattered. More strings per note means more sound, which is why modern pianos use up to three.
1821 – 1900
Fast repeating actions, cast-iron frames and crossed strings turn the piano into the powerful concert grand we know, with 88 keys.
1821
22 December 1821
Sébastien Érard's 'double escapement' was patented in London in 1821 by his nephew Pierre. A repetition lever catches the hammer part-way, so you can play the same note again before the key has fully risen.
Why it mattered. Almost every grand piano action today is based on this design, which makes fast repeated notes possible.
1825
17 December 1825
Babcock patented a complete iron frame cast in one piece for the square piano. Wood warps and moves with heat and damp, but iron could hold the strings' huge pull steady.
Why it mattered. Iron let makers use thicker, tighter strings for a bigger sound, and all modern pianos use a one-piece metal frame.
1831
1831–1889
Clara Wieck, later Schumann, gave concerts for 61 years, and more than 1,300 of her concert programmes survive. She played from memory at 13, which reviewers found remarkable, and helped make that the normal way to give a piano recital.
Why it mattered. Star pianists like her made the piano the centre of concert life.
1842
1811–1842
Wornum patented a small upright in 1811 and a taller cottage piano by 1813. In 1826 and 1842 he patented actions for uprights, including a new way to work the dampers and springs to return the hammers.
Why it mattered. His design is the ancestor of the action inside most upright pianos.
1843
Babcock worked as foreman for Chickering's firm. In 1843 Chickering patented the first full iron frame for a grand piano. By his death in 1853 the company had built more than 12,000 pianos.
Why it mattered. Iron-framed grands could fill a large hall with sound.
1844
1844; patented by Steinway 1874
A pedal that holds up only the dampers of keys already pressed was first shown by Boisselot & Fils at the Paris exhibition of 1844. Albert Steinway perfected and patented this sostenuto pedal in 1874.
Why it mattered. It lets a pianist hold one chord while playing other notes cleanly.
1859
20 December 1859
Steinway & Sons was founded in a Manhattan loft on 5 March 1853. In 1859 Henry Steinway Jr. patented a grand piano with its bass strings crossing over the others at an angle, on an iron frame. That brought the bridges nearer the middle of the soundboard.
Why it mattered. Longer bass strings over the liveliest part of the soundboard gave a richer sound, and nearly every grand is built this way now.
1888
late 1880s
For years many pianos had 85 keys, seven octaves from A to A. In the late 1880s Steinway built pianos with 88 keys, from A0 to C8, and other makers followed. By the early 1900s 88 keys was the standard around the world.
Why it mattered. 88 keys covers almost every note an orchestra can play.
By the numbers
Real instruments over two centuries: the keyboard grew from four octaves to seven and a quarter as music and iron frames demanded more notes.
1880 – 1970
Pianos play themselves from paper rolls, factories make hundreds of thousands a year, and Japan becomes the biggest piano maker in the world.
1898
1895–1904
Votey finished the first Pianola in his Detroit workshop in 1895. It read a punched paper roll and used air pressure to press the keys. The Aeolian Company put it on sale in the autumn of 1898. From 1904 the German Welte-Mignon went further, replaying a real pianist's speed, loudness and pedalling.
Why it mattered. Anyone could now fill their home with piano music, even if they could not play.
1900
1887–1902
Torakusu Yamaha started out making reed organs in Hamamatsu in 1887. In 1900 his company built an upright, the first piano made in Japan, and its first grand followed in 1902.
Why it mattered. It began a Japanese piano industry that would one day lead the world.
1909
Around 365,000 pianos were sold in the United States in 1909, when the country had about 90 million people. Hundreds of piano firms were founded between 1880 and 1910. Then gramophones and radio pulled buyers away.
Why it mattered. Before radio and TV, the piano was the family's home entertainment.
1965
1927–1966
Koichi Kawai, who had learned from Torakusu Yamaha, founded his own piano company in Hamamatsu in 1927. After the war both firms grew fast, and by 1965 Yamaha was making more pianos than any other maker in the world. In 1970 it built its millionth piano.
Why it mattered. Careful factory methods made good pianos affordable for millions of families.
1930 – today
Pickups, tines, synthesizers and chips give the piano new voices. Digital pianos talk to computers, and China builds most of the world's new pianos.
1965
1948–1965
During the Second World War Harold Rhodes made small pianos for injured airmen to play in bed. His tines, struck by hammers and read by pickups, led to the Fender Rhodes electric piano in 1965; Wurlitzer's used steel reeds instead. In 1964 Robert Moog built his first synthesizer.
Why it mattered. Electric keyboards were light, loud enough for bands and gave jazz, soul and pop a new sound.
1983
In 1983 Yamaha launched the first Clavinova, the YP-40, a piano with no strings that made its sound with chips. That same year MIDI arrived, a shared digital language that lets keyboards and computers talk to each other.
Why it mattered. A digital piano never needs tuning, fits in a small flat and can plug into a computer.
2006
1956–2006
Pearl River Piano was founded in Guangzhou in 1956 and can now make more than 100,000 pianos a year, in the world's largest piano factory. By 2006 China was the largest piano-producing country, making more than 370,000 pianos.
Why it mattered. Most new acoustic pianos in the world are now built in China.
Did you know?
The word piano is short for pianoforte, from Cristofori's 'harpsichord with soft and loud'.
A modern piano has 52 white keys and 36 black keys, from A0 to C8.
A Steinway grand has 12,116 parts, and each key's action has more than 57 of them.
Beethoven's last piano had four strings for most notes, to help the deaf composer hear it.
About 365,000 pianos were sold in the US in 1909; in 2020 it was about 21,000.
The people
1536 – 1611 · Prince, scholar and music theorist · China
Calculated twelve equal steps in the octave in 1584.
1655 – 1731 · Instrument maker · Padua and Florence, Italy
Invented the piano for the Medici court around 1700.
1683 – 1753 · Organ and keyboard builder · Germany
Built Germany's first pianos and won over J.S. Bach.
1728 – 1792 · Organ and piano maker · Augsburg, Germany
His light action with an escapement delighted Mozart.
1769 – 1833 · Piano maker and pianist · Augsburg and Vienna
Ran one of Vienna's leading piano firms and was Beethoven's friend.
1752 – 1831 · Piano and harp maker · Strasbourg and Paris, France
Invented the double escapement, the basis of the modern grand action.
1785 – 1842 · Piano maker · Massachusetts, USA
Patented the one-piece cast-iron frame in 1825.
1798 – 1853 · Piano maker · Boston, USA
Put a full iron frame into the grand piano in 1843.
1819 – 1896 · Concert pianist and composer · Germany
Gave concerts for 61 years and made playing from memory the norm.
1886 – 1955 · Piano maker · Hamamatsu, Japan
Helped build Japan's first pianos, then founded Kawai in 1927.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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