Who is the inventor of the piano pedal?

Pedals for the piano began life as pedals for the harpsichord. Very few harpsichords were outfitted with pedals because the purpose of the pedals was to change registration quickly and easily on the harpsichord, without having to lift the hands from the keys to do the same thing. Mostly, it was the English who dabbled in applying pedals to the harpsichord. As a result, they were also the first to add pedals to pianos. Before that, the earliest pianos made had no pedals at all because they were considered to be harpsichords with loud and soft (in Italian, "Gravicembalo col Forte e Piano") When the addition of stops on the forte-pianos were created to change the sound, it involved manually shifting the keyboard or pulling or pushing a handstop to effect the change. Later, the Austrian and German fortepiano makers invented the knee lever to raise and lower the dampers. The English pianoforte makers were applying pedals to do the same thing about the same time. By 1815, pedals were standard equipment on almost every piano. In Vienna from 1828- 1845, piano makers would customarily have as many as 5 - 7 pedals on a piano. These pedals activated bells, drums, snare effects and muffled effects, as well as the usual damper lifting and keyboard moving actions. In England, piano makers limited themselves for the most part to only 2 or 3 pedals. These differences were largely dictated by the peculiar nature of the action designs for the pianos from these different areas of Europe.