Summary: We mark the birth on May 4, 1655 – 365 years ago today – of the inventor, musical instrument builder, and engineer extraordinaire Bartolomeo Cristofori. Though born in the northern Italian city of Padua in the Republic of Venice, Cristofori spent the bulk of his professional life in Florence, where he designed and then built the first piano sometime before the year 1700. No less than the inventions of Archimedes, Johannes Gutenberg, Karl Benz, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers, Cristofori’s “piano” changed the world.<br>
