Piano Key board

Piano keys were originally made from Ebony and Ivory. These are the natrual colors of those materials. Ebony was used with the ivory to distinguish between the two sounds. There were no racial implications.

Are you sure, nick?

I thought ebony and ivory is the reason too

It is, bcKay. I was just jerking NickFun's chain. It's a harmless passtime.

Welcome to a2k, btw.

Thanks for answer nick. Bless you always.

Some old harpsichords (perhaps predating the pianoforte) had the colors reversed -- black for the "big" keys and white for the "little" keys.

Be careful of your inquiries here Mcoy, you might get posts like this from math geeks.

Piano Keys

If you've ever looked closely at a piano keyboard you may have
noticed that the widths of the white keys are not all the same
at the back ends (where they pass between the black keys). Of
course, if you think about it for a minute, it's clear they
couldn't possibly all be the same width, assuming the black keys
are all identical (with non-zero width) and the white keys all
have equal widths at the front ends, because the only simultaneous
solution of 3W=3w+2b and 4W=4w+3b is with b=0.

After realizing this I started noticing different pianos and how
they accommodate this little problem in linear programming. Let W
denote the widths of the white keys at the front, and let B denote
the widths of the black keys. Then let a, b,..., g (assigned to
their musical equivalents) denote the widths of the white keys
at the back. Assuming a perfect fit, it's impossible to have
a = b = ... = g. The best you can do is try to minimize the
greatest difference between any two of these keys.

One crude approach would be to set d=g=a=(W-B) and b=c=e=f=(W-B/2),
which gives a maximum difference of B/2 between the widths of any
two white keys (at the back ends). This isn't a very good solution,
and I've never seen an actual keyboard based on this pattern
(although some cartoon pianos seems to have this pattern). A better
solution is to set a=b=c=e=f=g=(W-3B/4) and d=(W-B/2). With this
arrangement, all but one of the white keys have the same width at
the back end, and the discrepancy of the "odd" key (the key of "d")
is only B/4. Some actual keyboards (e.g., the Roland HP-70) use
this pattern.

Another solution is to set c=d=e=f=b=(W-2B/3) and g=a=(W-5B/6),
which results in a maximum discrepancy of just B/6. There are
several other combinations that give this same maximum discrepancy,
and actual keyboards based on this pattern are not uncommon.

If we set c=e=(W-5B/8) and a=b=d=f=g=(W-3B/4) we have a maximum
discrepancy of only B/8, and quite a few actual pianos use this
pattern as well. However, the absolute optimum arrangement is to
set c=d=e=(W-2B/3) and f=g=a=b=(W-3B/4), which gives a maximum
discrepancy of just B/12. This pattern is used on many keyboards,
e.g. the Roland PC-100.

The "B/12 solution" is best possible, given that all the black keys
are identical and all the white keys have equal widths at the front
ends. For practical manufacturing purposes this is probably the
best approach. However, suppose we relax those conditions and allow
variations in the widths of the black keys and in the widths of the
white keys at the front ends. All we require is that the black
keys (in total) are allocated 5/12 of the octave. On this basis,
what is the optimum arrangement, minimizing the maximum discrepancy
between any two widths of the same type?

Let A, B,...G denote the front-end widths of the white keys, and
let a#, c#, d#, f#, g# denote the widths of the black keys. I
believe the optimum arrangement is given by dividing the octave
into 878472 units, and then setting

f=g=a=b=72156 units c=d=e=74606 units discrepancy=2450

f#=g#=a#=72520 units c#=d#=74235 units discrepancy=1715

F=G=A=B=126546 units C=D=E=124096 units discrepancy=2450

The maximum discrepancy between any two widths of the same class is
1/29.88 of the width of the average black key, which is less than
half the discrepancy for the "B/12 solution".

The max discrepancy is 1/358.56 of the total octave for the white
keys, and 1/512.22 for the black keys. Since an octave is normally
about 6.5 inches, the max discrepancy is about 0.0181 inches for the
white keys and 0.0127 inches for the black keys. (One peculiar fact
about this optimum arrangement is that the median point of the octave,
the boundary between f and f#, is exactly 444444 units up from the
start of the octave.)

http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath043.htm


Oh, and welcome

Thank you for that complex mathematical formula panzade. I'm sure that clears up a lot of complex mathematical questions that naturally arise when people ask questions about the color of the keys.

Your Inquiry
It has been a long standing international standard to denote the sharps (blk) from the flats (white) on pianos.
Go to Google.com and search for: Piano- Basic Principles :wink: