Just yesterday, I was thrown a question by one of my curious students asking me who came up with the idea of a piano...

Of course, I happily dived into the history of how piano has evolved from harpsichords back in Baroque times...

Which then, he threw me another question...
1."Who then came up with the idea of harpsichords in the first place?"

2."Who was the one that standardized notations to what it is today?"

3. "Who came up with the idea of notating music?"

Well, I do know that harpsichord was an idea derived from organs, which was had a longer history and was far older than harpsichords...but that was barely enough to suffice his curiousity...he wanted to know where all this idea of 'hammering on metal strings' came from...

I for one, am stumped... ... I am still trying to google it out...but at the meantime...

Does anyone have any ideas??

"Let's get back to our lesson and teach you the piano, shall we? ..."

[what's wrong with aji nomoto?]

Lessa, the piano developed out of the clavichord which developed out of the monochord. I'm sure wiki will have the answers.

well about the organ at least I know they had a form of it way back in the heyday of the Romans or shortly thereafter.

The Romans had an organ at the coliseum but I think it was played with the fists. The monochord goes back to pythagaros (600 b.c.).