Digital Piano Center

The predecessor of piano was the hammered dulcimer. This is a stringed musical instrument, with the strings placed and stretched on a sounding board of trapezoidal shape. The strings are struck with small mallet hammers.
Even though there were several attempts to create keyboard stringed instruments during the Middle Ages, the invention of the piano that we know nowadays is attributed to Bartolomeo Cristorfori, an expert harpsichord maker, employed by the Medici family. Although it's not known exactly when he made the first piano, an inventory made by the Medici family atests the existance of a piano in the year 1700.
A piano is a very complex musical instrument, consisting of over 12,000 parts, and 10,000 of the parts are mobile. This is one of the reasons the piano is also known as "The King Of All Musical Instruments".
Over the years, with the evolution of technology and the discovery of various materials, such as plastic, there were many attempts to "improve" the piano, by replacing some of the wooden parts with parts made from other materials. Changes didn't work that well, the components cracked, the quality of sound was diminished etc.
Nowadays there are many types of pianos, beginning with grand and upright pianos, electrical pianos (similar to the electric guitars, in their functioning), digital pianos, designed to replicate the feel and sound of grand pianos, and a multitude of MIDI keyboards that can be played as a piano, via a computer. Although digital pianos can never be superior to acoustic pianos (at least that's what it seems so far), in terms of sound, they provide various other options which make them more practical. To find out more details about the current pianos click here: best digital piano
Grand pianos are superior to vertical pianos in quite a few ways. The most important advantage of a grand piano over an upright (or vertical) piano is that a key can be reset / replayed faster.
The 5 leading piano manufacturers today are: Stenway, Yamaha, Bösendorfer, Manson - Hamlin, and Baldwin.
The standard piano has 88 keys, and 230 strings. The average string in a piano has around 160 pounds of tension.
During a concert, over 30 tons of pressure are being exerted on the stretched steel strings of a grand piano.
Pianos come in various shapes and sizes. Here are the common standards for the most known piano types: concert grand piano - 8'11" (or larger), half concert grand piano - 7'4", parlour grand piano - 6'8", professional grand piano - 6', drawing room grand piano - 6'4", living room grand piano - 5'10", baby grand piano - 5'8", upright piano - 51" or even larger, vertical piano - from 36" to 51", studio piano - 44", console piano - 42", spinet piano - from 36" to 38".