Julius Ferdinand Blüthner (* 11 March 1824, Falkenhain, today Meuselwitz, Thuringia - 15 April 1910, Leipzig) was a German piano maker and founder of the Blüthner piano factory.
In 1853 he founded a piano-manufacturing company in Leipzig Germany. Blüthner pianos had an early success at exhibitions, conservatories and the concert stage. Further inventions and innovations lead Blüthner to patent a repetition action, and, in 1873, the aliquot scaling patent for grand pianos. This added a fourth, sympathetic (aliquot) string to each trichord group in the treble to enrich the piano's weakest register by enhancing the overtone spectrum of the instrument.