NEW YORK – The upright piano was the original home entertainment center. Before the rise of the television, the hi-fi stereo and the radio, family and friends gathered around a piano to while the evening away. The upright, or vertical design, which arrived in the early 1800s, effectively democratized the piano; it was more compact and less expensive than a grand piano, the case for which concealed a horizontally-oriented arrangement of strings that demanded far more floor space than most middle-class people could provide in their homes.