and flexibility, but in the piano they had to be much heavier and drawn very taut. In the latter, too, the space required for the hammers necessitated a gap in the soundboard at one end. The hammer-action was more complicated than any of the direct jack-actions, since the hammer must be thrown freely against the string, must then recoil instantly, and the damper meantime must be kept off the string till the key was released. The devices employed to secure all these results in the smallest space and with the minimum of resistance and noise have been far too many to be here enumerated. The earliest instruments resembled the harpsichord in shape, like the modern 'grand,' but from perhaps 1760 they were made after the clavichord style, like the modern 'square'; still later the now popular 'upright' was added. Most of the great improvements in detailed mechanism, including the introduction of a metal frame, strengthened by braces, and of steel wire of the finest quality in place of the original brass, as well as the gradual development of a perfect action, belong to the 19th century.
The pianoforte tone is quite distinct from that of its predecessors, since it uses the latent sonority of a tense and heavy wire, actuated by a stroke from a soft, yielding hammer-head. It has a vigorous ictus, and, if the hammer-heads be good, an almost vocal roundness and sweetness. Its loudness can be indefinitely varied (whence its name) and the character of its tone considerably modified by varying the touch. Hence the piano has proved to have all the excellences of both the clavichord and the harpsichord, with several peculiar to itself. To increase its power and breadth it is now commonly made with two or three strings to the note, and has pedals by which the dampers may be held up at will, the number of strings affected by the hammers reduced, felts inserted between the hammers and the strings, etc. On account of its mechanical immaturity, it did not come into public use until about 1765, but before 1800 it had already become accepted as the keyboard instrument par excellence.
Some experiments toward a hammer-instrument may have been made early in the 17th century, but what they were is unknown. About 1695 Pantaleon Hebenstreit (d. 1750), a dancing-master at Merseburg, devised an enlarged and improved dulcimer (with 185 strings), which in 1705 he exhibited before Louis XIV. at Paris. His success with it secured him court-positions at Eisenach from 1706 and at Dresden from 1714. His dulcimer, commonly known as the 'pantaleon' or 'pantalon' (from his first name), was without a keyboard. Before 1709 Bartolomeo Cristofori (d. 1731), an able harpsichord-maker, originally of Padua, but from about 1687 of Florence, began to make hammer-claviers which were described by Scipione Maffei (d. 1755) in 1711. Cristofori, then, appears to have been the inventor of the true pianoforte. The only extant specimens of his work, dating from 1720 and 1726, have all the essential elements of the complete action, even to the check to catch the hammer on its recoil. They have two strings to the note and a compass of 4-1/3 and 4 octaves respectively. How many pianos Cristofori made is not known, but his fame as an inventor extended to Germany as early as 1720. Other pioneer experimenters were the Parisian harpsichord-maker Marius, who exhibited models of hammer-actions in 1716, and Christoph Gottlieb Schröter (d. 1782),
