Steinway & Sons

Steinway & Sons, usually called Steinway, is a German-American piano company founded in 1853 in New York City by the German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, who later became known as Henry E. Steinway. As the business grew it moved to a larger factory in New York and later opened a second factory in Hamburg, Germany. The New York factory, in the borough of Queens, supplies the Americas, and the Hamburg factory supplies the rest of the world. The company is known for the quality of its instruments and for its inventions in piano development, holding 139 patents in piano making, the first granted in 1857. Its share of the high-end grand piano market is reported to exceed 80 percent, a dominant position that some musicians and writers have criticised as blocking innovation. Steinway also sells two lower-priced piano lines under the brand names Boston and Essex, and its pianos won a gold medal at the American Institute Fair in 1855 and three medals at the Paris exposition of 1867.