The piano was built on the backs of previous technological advances in keyboard instruments. Pipe organs have been around since antiquity, and their evolution allowed instrument designers to discover how to make keyboard mechanisms for playing pitches.
The hammered dulcimers, which have been used in Europe since the Middle Ages, were the first string instruments having hit strings. The piano is assigned to
Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who worked as the Keeper of the Instruments for
Ferdinando de Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany. Cristofori was a master harpsichord maker who was well-versed in the field of stringed keyboard instruments. His understanding of keyboard mechanisms and motions aided him in the development of the first pianos.
When Cristofori originally created a piano, no one knows for sure. By the year
1700, his employers, the Medici family, had made an inventory that indicated the presence of a piano. The three remaining
Cristofori pianos date from the 1720s. Un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte was
Cristofori's term for the instrument, which was later abbreviated as
pianoforte, fortepiano, and, finally, piano.
