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When I was in high school in the late 70s, I had a Casio music calculator somewhat bigger than the one in the article, layed out horizontally instead of vertica
by yardshop 3y ago
When I was in high school in the late 70s, I had a Casio music calculator somewhat bigger than the one in the article, layed out horizontally instead of vertically, but probably had similar musical capabilities.
I found that by entering a number, I think it was 951, and taking the square root, it would play a melody that ended on an up note, and taking the square root again ended on a resolution note. So I could press on a special key to play a little melody! (further square roots were random and less musical)
I knew about Kraftwerk at that point (Autobahn and Radio Activity), but this was a couple years before Computer World came out. Now I wish I still had that thing!
- fsckboy 3y agoin the same timeframe, there was a bug in the DEC VT-100 terminal (maybe related to autorepeat?) where hitting the right key combinations would put it into a mode where pressing keys would play an incomplete variety of low notes, but sufficient for Ride of the Valkyries
- dimatura 3y agoAlmost certainly the legendary Casio VL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_VL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_VL-1. Featured in a quite a few famous and not-so-famous songs.
- yardshop 3y agoIt wasn't that, I'm pretty certain it was this: Casio Melody 80 https://suburbanrelics.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=140 https://suburbanrelics.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&... What I had was definitely a calculator that produced musical notes, not a keyboard that also had a calculator. But I'm sure that one had its impact too!
- h335ian 3y agoYaaaas, my dad had one of these and through some magazine I had learned it could produce music… I had limited success but I was able to master enough annoying compositions to be forbidden from messing with it. I forgot entirely about this until your photo. Wow. And I had no clue who Kraftwerk were until the 90s when I could comprehend and appreciate anything. I had no clue about the connection.
- JohnFen 3y agoI had that calculator! I remember it fondly. I annoyed the heck out of so many people with it.