Americus Backers (died 1778), sometimes described as the father of the English grand pianoforte style, brought the hammer striking action for keyboard instruments from his master Gottfried Silbermann's workshop in Freiburg to England in the mid-18th century. Unlike the eleven other ex-apprentices of Silbermann who followed him to England and built square pianos with his action, Backers developed Silbermann's action (copied from Cristofori) into a reliable, powerful and responsive form that he built into a grand harpsichord case and added two tonal effects – una corda and damper lift – activated by pedals built into the dedicated trestle stand, again his original innovation. This new instrument altered the landscape of English music, causing composers and musicians to consign the plucked string harpsichord and its music to history. It is upon Americus's design that the modern grand pianoforte we know today is based. Life Contemporary and later sources agree that Americus was of Dutch descent. To date, no chronicler has turned up his record of birth so we can only say that he was born in the early part of the 18th Century. We adduce this because known dates of birth of other apprentices at Silbermann's workshop (such as Johannes Zumpe) are in the 1720s. Americus migrated to Freiberg, Saxony, apprenticed to organ, harpsichord and piano builder Gottfried Silbermann. The date of Americus's indentures could not be before 1711, the year that Silbermann set up his organ workshop and could equally have been post-1730 by which time the workshop was turning out harpsichords and pianos with Silbermann designed actions in square and in harpsichord cases. Americus was the first of twelve of Silbermann's apprentices to depart for England. Since we know that Zumpe, next to set up shop in England, arrived in 1756, Americus must have been here before this, yet we have no record of his domicile or trade until 1763 when he took up residence in London's Jermyn Street (with the Anglicized Christian name of Andrew) where, according to the rate books of St. James, Piccadilly, he lived until 1778. A.J. Hipkins in his History of the Pianoforte reports that Americus died in that year but does not give his age. His instruments Americus built both harpsichords and pianofortes. He is described by composer, musician and chronicler Charles Burney in Rees's Cyclopaedia for 1772 as "a harpsichord maker of second rank, who constructed several pianofortes, and improved the mechanism