Oldest Recorded Computer Music
Included in the Ferranti Mark 1's instruction set was a hoot command, which enabled the machine to give auditory feedback to its operators. The sound generated could be altered in pitch, a feature which was exploited when the Mark 1 made the earliest known recording of computer music, playing a medley which included "God Save the King", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and "In the Mood". The recording was made by the BBC towards the end of 1951, and the programming was done by Christopher Strachey, a maths teacher at Harrow and a friend of Alan Turing. It was not however the first computer to have played music – CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, achieved that with a rendition of Colonel Bogey.
Read more about this topic: Ferranti Mark 1
Famous quotes containing the words oldest, recorded, computer and/or music:
“The age of a woman doesnt mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.”
—Sigmund Z. Engel (b. 1869)
“Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst.”
—Italo Calvino (19231985)
“What, then, is the basic difference between todays computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of patterna capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)
“And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (18501894)