who first invented the piano ?

 Meet the man who invented the most popular instrument in the world: Bartolomeo Cristofori.

The piano is one of the most popular instruments ever invented. So you’d think the inventor would be a household name – like Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison.

But no. The inventor of the keyboard instrument that inspired Beethoven, Rachmaninov and Liszt is a man you’ve probably never heard of.

Bartolomeo Cristofori was born in Padua in 1655. There’s very little record of him until, in 1688, he starts working for Prince Ferdinando de Medici (heir to one of the most powerful families in Tuscany).

By this time, he was already a musical instrument maker and technician. Ferdinando hired Cristofori to take care of his menagerie of musical instruments – and probably because he’d heard that Cristofori was a pretty cracking inventor too  .