Again we are indebted to Italy for the invention and name of the pianoforte. It is a strange fact that, entirely unknown to one another, three men were working out the same principle--namely, the hammer action--at the same time. Marius in France, Schroeter in Germany, and Bartolomeo Christofori (often called Christofali) in Italy worked secretly and simultaneously, and for a long time it was undecided to whom the honor really belonged. A careful examination of all records, however, establishes beyond a doubt the priority of Christofori's claim. The hammer action was what all previous instruments lacked, and it seems strange that it took nearly two thousand years for this principle to be discovered and applied. Many times the inventors appeared to be almost upon it. They worked all around it, but the idea seemed illusive and they never grasped it. [Illustration: Christofori Piano from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City] At this point it might be well to enumerate in order the instruments which preceded the piano, if only to fasten them clearly in memory: the lyre and harp of the ancients; the dulcimer, played by means of the plectra and to which, as the hand could use but one plectrum, there was a keyboard added to use all the fingers, thus moving the plectra faster; the clavichord, with tangents of brass to strike the strings; the virginal and the spinet, in reality the same; the harpsichord, with its crow quills to half rub, half strike the strings, still far away from the hammer action of the present-day piano. It seems almost unaccountable that the manufacturers who so greatly improved the mechanism of the harpsichord at this stage failed to discover the hammer action. But at last, after the quest of centuries, the quill, thorn, and ivory were discarded and a small hammer struck the string, giving a clear, precise, but delicate tone hitherto unheard. The "scratch with a sound at the end" was gone forever. The harpsichord had been changed into an instrument of percussion, and it only remained for man to perfect that primitive creation into the superb piano of today. Although Italy gave the invention to the world, it remained for northern Europe and England to take up the idea and improve it. Christofori solved three important problems: first, the construction of thicker strings to withstand the hammer action; second, a way to compensate for the weakness caused by the opening in the tuning-pin block; third, the mechanical control of the rebound of the hammer from the strings, so that the hammer should not block against the latter and prevent vibration.