Today, the Google Doodle celebrates Bartolomeo Cristofori’s 360th birthday:
The Guardian explains,
Cristofori was born in Padua on this day in 1655 in what was then the Republic of Venice.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the instrument Cristofori invented was referred to during his lifetime as a harpsichord that plays soft and loud, from which its name is derived. In Italian, the phrase is gravicembalo col piano e forte.
In 1973, Billy Joel released “Piano Man”: