Paul von Jankó

Paul von Jankó (1856 to 1919) was a Hungarian pianist and engineer who is remembered for the keyboard that carries his name. He studied mathematics and music in Vienna, where his teachers included Anton Bruckner, and then went to Berlin, where in 1881 and 1882 he studied mathematics at the university and piano with H. Erlich. In 1882 he patented the Jankó keyboard, a piano keyboard with six rows of keys, building on earlier multi-row designs by Conrad Henfling in 1708, Johann Rohleder in 1791 and William Lunn in 1843. From 1886 he played his own instrument on his concert tours, and his pupil Tekla Nathan Bjerke gave many concerts in Norway on it. The design never spread widely because players found the new fingering hard to learn. Jankó was also a proponent of the international auxiliary language Ido, having earlier supported Esperanto, and he created the Ido star symbol and served as secretary of the Ido Academy from 1912 to 1913.