Dhaka: Google doodle is celebrating the 360^th birthday of Bartolomeo Cristofori, the man who invented piano.

Bartolomeo Cristofori was born in Padua, Italy on this day in 1655.

Cristofori was an Italian musical instrument maker credited with inventing the pianoforte, or the piano in 1700. One of his biggest innovations was creating a hammer mechanism that struck the strings on a keyboard to create sound. The use of a hammer made it possible to produce softer or louder sounds depending upon how light or hard a player pressed on the keys.

The term ‘piano’ comes from Italian ‘Pianoforte’ which means soft and loud.

The oldest surviving piano was built by Cristofori in 1720. It is on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The Doodle features an appearance of Cristofori playing a note from Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ and features a sliding scale that allows the visitors to adjust the volume of the piano’s volume.

On the blog dedicated to its doodles, Google wrote that one of Cristofori’s ‘a biggest innovation was creating a hammer mechanism that struck the strings on a keyboard to create sound. The use of a hammer made it possible to produce softer or louder sounds depending upon how light or hard a player pressed on the key.’

It says, ‘Being able to change the volume was a major breakthrough. And that’s exactly what doodler Leon Hong wanted to highlight in this interactive doodle.’