BARTOLOMEO CRISTOFORI’S 360TH BIRTHDAY IN GOOGLE DOODLE

The inventor of the piano, Bartolomeo Cristofori ( right), is celebrated in Google doodle. Born on 4 May, 1655 in Padua, northern Italy, Cristofori initially worked making harpsichords and clavichords and was employed by Prince Ferdinando de Medici, son of the Duke of Tuscany. He is believed to have started work on what would become a piano in the 1690s and the first one is thought to have been made in 1709. In a harpsichord the strings are plucked, so it is not possible to play the notes softer or louder. Cristofori managed to design a mechanism that transferred the pressure placed on the keys to the hammers that hit the strings. He called his invention a “grave cembalo col piano e forte” — a clavichord with soft and loud. The name was shortened to pianoforte and then simply piano.