Like many other inventions, the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations. The mechanisms of keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. In a clavichord the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord they are plucked by quills. Centuries of job on the mechanism of the harpsichord in particular had shown the most effective ways to fabricate the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard. Cristofori, himself an crack harpsichord maker, was well acquainted with this build of knowledge.
Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the course the piano was strung, such as the exercise of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the fitness of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically Grand Piano Covers overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for custom in fine pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.