At the 1867 Paris Exposition, attendees mobbed the Steinway & Sons exhibit in a scene depicted here after the piano maker became the first American manufacturer to receive the Grand Gold Medal of Honor at the fair. The company leveraged its expo exposure with a program named Steinway Artists, whose ranks eventually came to include Franz Liszt, Vladimir Horowitz, Cole Porter, and others who, though uncompensated by the company, played solely on Steinway pianos. Now 162 years old, Steinway & Sons has built more than 600,000 of the pianos often called "the instrument of the immortals."