Ludwig Bösendorfer

Ludwig Bösendorfer (10 April 1835 – 9 May 1919) was an Austrian piano manufacturer, son of Ignaz Bösendorfer and inheritor of his father's company Bösendorfer. He modernized the construction of the company's pianos, and made the company well known beyond Austria.

Life Bösendorfer was born in Vienna in 1835. He attended the Vienna Polytechnic Institute, and then worked in his father's company, taking it over in 1859. In 1860 the company moved to a new factory in Türkenstraße in Alsergrund, Vienna. He moved away from the customary Viennese pianos (described in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "the cheaper build and mechanism identified with Vienna"): from 1870, cast iron frames were used in piano construction, and from 1878 he produced pianos with English mechanism.