A recent tour of the Steinway factory in Queens showed an apparently serious effort to improve the instrument.

I'm told that the Steinway factory has adopted it.

By 1900, Steinway factories produced more than 3,500 pianos a year.

Additional materials, including the previous article and multimedia features from the Steinway factory and its Manhattan showroom, can be found at nytimes.com/piano.

It was entirely natural, therefore, that when the Steinway factory churned out the company's 500,000th instrument, Carnegie served as the locale for a celebration.

Pianos, the workers at the Steinway factory in Astoria will tell you, are more like humans than you'd think.

Nearby is the Steinway factory.

Even the Steinway factory in Long Island City never has that many pianos in house at one time.

I was taken to a darkened terrace entirely overwhelmed by the enormous mass of the Steinway factory.

K0862, as it is made at the Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens.