The player piano or pianola grows to become a staple in middle-class homes. The ability to buy piano-rolls of popular songs and have them play automatically at the pump of a pedal made them hugely popular, but advancements in radio and 78rpm records in the 1920s began a new trend in music listening that quickly replaced them.

1900

Pianist and composer Nils Frahm keeps the flame burning for the greatest musical instrument by launching Piano Day on March 29,the 88th day of the year, in part asa way of promoting the work of David Klavins and his innovativeand often gargantuan pianos.

2015

The first upright piano is developedby Robert Wornum in London.This space-saving and affordable design found a huge market in fashionable living rooms.

1826

Ludwig van Beethoven writes Für Elise, believed to be the best-selling work of sheet music in history. It was probably composed on an Erard fortepiano, but we can’t be sure because the passionate player (the greatest performer of his day) was notorious for breaking his instruments!

1810

Bartolomeo Cristofori of Paduainvents a new hammer mechanismwhich offers players a much greater dynamic range and sustain. It isdubbed “gravicembalo col piano e forte”—harpsichord with soft and loud, eventually shortened to pianoforte. Cristofori’s groundbreaking design is the grandfather of every piano since.

1700

The clavichord was a kind of mechanical hammered dulcimer, operated via a keyboard first developed for pipe organs. It hada very limited sound and range,but was popular in homes,including Bach’s.

1400 AD

The invention of the Storytone electric piano begins the next revolution, advanced by the classic Fender Rhodes in the 1960s, electronic pianos in the 1970s and digital pianos in the 1980s. These most modern instruments sound and feel uncannily like acoustic pianos, but they just aren’t.

1939

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The Steinway piano company isfounded, and quickly grew to be one of the most famous makers,and the standard for concerthalls worldwide.

1853

The first iron frame is developed, allowing for much higher tension strings. Modern piano frames canhave as much as 20 tons of totalstring tension. This advancement industrialized the manufacturingof the piano.

1825

English inventor John Broadwood begins to develop bigger, more powerful instruments, eventually introducing the sustain pedal and extending their range.

1770

The harpsichord was a more sophisticated instrument, but its mechanism that plucked the strings rather than striking them still gaveit limited expressive potential.

1550

The hammered dulcimer was the first widely used stringed musical instrument, popular in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, China, Greece and Rome. It was basically a box with strings stretched across it and struck with drumstick-like hammers.

500 BC

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