The piano is a musical mechanism played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers. The hammers immediately rebound allowing the http://www.pianobench.com/catalog/1 strings to continue vibrating at their deep-toned frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies them.

Broadwood constructed instruments that were progressively larger, louder, and farther robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first firm to build pianos with a ambit of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools hand-me-down different piano actions: Broadwoods were extra robust, Viennese instruments were fresh sensitive.