This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment ----- Original Message -----=20 From: Kent Swafford=20 To: Pianotech ; College Technicians=20 Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 2:43 PM Subject: Fwd: info for a journalist The PTG receives occasional research requests from journalists. We = want=20 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? Just evolved that way. Originally there were fewer octaves (4 = 1/2 in one of Cristofori's pianos). Gradually composers wanted a wider = and wider range, until 85 keys became standard. Then sometime in the = 19th century, Steinway added the highest 3 keys for a total of 88, and = other builders followed suit. Then Boesendorfer added a few low notes = on their Imperial. It could change again in the future. =20 =20 > How many pianos are there in the world? Somebody at Yamaha probably knows. La Roy Edwards, maybe? > How many pianos are there in the U S? Can't find a recent figure, but quoting from "Men, Women, & = Pianos" (by Arthur Loesser, Simon & Schuster, 1954): "In 1920, at the = cumulative height of production -- before the instrument's social = devaluation had too seriously lessened its output -- the population of = 105,000,000 owned about 7,000,000 pianofortes. (Again we are = calculating that all the instruments made for thirty years past were = extant.) That means one piano for every fifteen persons." =20 And from "Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos" ( by Edwin M. = Good, Stanford University Press, 2001): "By 1960, Japan had taken third = place to the United States and the USSR, making 48,000 pianos that year = as against 160,000 for the United States and 88,000 for the USSR; by the = end of the decade, Japan had leaped past both countries to move into = first place. United Nations data for 1970 show 273,000 pianos for = Japan, 220,000 for the United States, and 200,000 for the USSR. Next to = these figures, the 1970 totals for France (1,000), England (17,000), and = Germany (45,000, East and West together) are more than a little anemic. = In the next eight years Japanese output increased more than 25 percent, = to stand at 374,000 units in 1979. Through the 1980s, world production = declined in general so that by 1990 American output was only about = 112,000 per year, and Japanese was well under 300,000. American = production hit rock bottom in 1996, with 84,000, but more recently the = figure has been rising, coming to almost 107,000 in 1998. " But a world total, or even a U.S. total, I can't seem to find = and it's way past my bedtime. -David Nereson, RPT, Denver =20 _______________________________________________ pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/42/fe/40/1e/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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