The invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments.
Cristofori was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. This knowledge of keyboard mechanisms and actions helped him to develop the first pianos. It is not known when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by 1700.
The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s (see picture above). Cristofori named the instrument un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte (“a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud”), abbreviated over time as pianoforte, fortepiano, and later reduced to only piano.
