Wapping London England

Did You Know Piano Facts

1711

John Shore was the inventor of the tuning fork. He became a royal trumpeter in 1688 and rose to sergeant trumpeter in 1708. He was also lutenist to the Chapel Royal, appointed in 1706. A lute is aguitar-like instrument with a long neck and a pear-shaped body,much used in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. The instrument is notoriously difficult to keep in tune, and Shore devised the tuning fork to help him tune his lute. He died in 1752.