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'Oldest' computer music unveiled [2008]
- teeja 17y agoThere were plenty of programmable machines that made sounds in ancient history ... but recording was rare (until wire recorders anyway). But someone who beat that 1951 recording may turn up yet.
- paulgerhardt 17y agoA selection of PDP-1 Music is also available here: http://www.dpbsmith.com/pdp1music/ http://www.dpbsmith.com/pdp1music/ If one goes to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View one can hear works replayed on the actual hardware by the original hacker, Peter Samson. One can listen to the recording here (scroll down to audio): http://pdp-1.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/index.php?f=theme&s=5&ss=3 http://pdp-1.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/index.php?f=theme&... The PDP-1 did not have a purpose built audio synthesizer; the four flip-flop bits mentioned in the former link were actually programmed by controlling 4 LED/Lamps on the front panel and outputting their signal directly to an amplifier! "During the course of the restoration project, original MIT hacker Peter Samson, rebuilt Spacewar! from source tapes to work with the control boxes the team built, and to use the intensity feature of our display. He also read the music data tapes, reverse-engineered their data format, and wrote a program to play them."