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When did keyboards resembling modern keyboards first appear?
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keyboard instrument
Moog electronic sound synthesizer
A keyboard resembling the modern type—consisting of a series of parallel levers that can be depressed by the fingers—first appeared in the 14th century.1
While the concept of a keyboard dates back to the hydraulis (an ancient organ) in the 3rd century BCE, this mechanism largely disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire, and early medieval organs often utilized sliders or different key mechanisms. By the 14th century, the familiar lever-based keyboard had emerged, though the standardization of the arrangement of naturals and sharps, as well as the specific coloring of the keys (which became standardized around 1800), evolved gradually over subsequent centuries.12