I think I can help: 1) There are 88 keys because people wanted at least half an octave of quite useless notes that are hard to tune. 2) There are 83,356,211 pianos in the world. At any given time, 1,209 of them are in reasonably good tune. 3) There are 38,256,001 pianos in the U.S. A third of these need tuning. Another third also need fixing, adjusting, regulating. The remaining third are about equally divided between well-tuned pianos that play well and pianos that died 30 years ago but are still kept as flower stands, dust traps, and mouse nesting boxes. These figures are based on WAG data but are surely accurate enough for most journalists. Alan Barnard -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org]On Behalf Of Kent Swafford Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 3:43 PM To: Pianotech; College Technicians Subject: Fwd: info for a journalist The PTG receives occasional research requests from journalists. We want to help, but have limited ability to do so. Can anyone answer the following questions, citing sources? Thanks, Kent Swafford Begin forwarded message: > Why 88 keys on a piano? > How many pianos are there in the world? > How many pianos are there in the U S? _______________________________________________ pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
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