It's an instrument that we're all familiar with even if we don't know how to play it.

It's one of the most commonly played instruments in the world, yet its origins are rather

recent. Its direct ancestor is an instrument that most people don't realize and that

it has a significant difference

from other instruments that look very similar. Learn more about the piano

also known as the piano forte, how it works and how it was invented on this

episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The origins of the piano only go back about 300 years and the modern version of the

piano goes back much less than that. But before we get into the specifics, it's

necessary to know exactly how and why the piano came about. The piano wasn't the first keyboard instrument, or even close to the first keyboard

instrument for that matter. The first known instrument to use a keyboard was the water organ, which was popular in

ancient Greece and Rome. It was an early organ that used

water to push air through pipes. It would require one or two people to pump the water

while the musician played. I think there's an interesting future episode on ancient

musical instruments but for the purpose of this episode the main thing is to note that

the water organ was the first instrument to use a keyboard. Here I will note that keyboard instruments are not technically a class of musical instruments.

Broadly speaking there are three types of instruments, wind instruments,

string instruments, and percussion instruments. A keyboard is just an input device.

There are actually wind, string, and percussion instruments that all use a keyboard,

similar to how a typing keyboard can be used for both an analog typewriter and a computer.

The ancient water organ, just like its successor instrument, the pipe organ, is a wind instrument.

The next big step towards the piano came with the creation of the Harpsichord.

The earliest known reference to the Harpsichord was in 1397,

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