The piano is 300-year-old technology. So can it be improved? Made more cheaply? An engineering professor is looking in to it. “Is there some material other than wood that will produce the dulcet sound of a Steinway without costing a mint? Can we figure out a way of constructing the keyboard-action mechanism (the keys striking the strings) so that it doesn’t take an army of craftsman to put it into place? Can you change the shape of the piano and still allow it to resist the 20 tonnes of pressure the wires exert? Can piano wire be made differently?”