Early computer music

  1. Back when core memory was in use one could "listen" to the memory with a transistor radio. A game among system programmers was to access memory in such a manner as to produce recognizeble tunes on the radio.
  2. Printers produce a buzzing with varying frequency depending on the text being printed (this is because of the rate at which the hammers strike the slugs in the print chain). The same system programmers would also compete to see who could print a job that played specific (and known) tunes.

I recall being shown a PDP-8 in Uppsala University two years ago. It had a program that would perform memory accesses so as to generate noise that could be picked up by an AM radio. I was most amazed to hear a *polyhonic* version of "The Entertainer" come from a PDP-8 :-)

While a student at UCSD in the middle 60's I had the opportunity to work many late nights in the computer punch card room on my physical chemistry lab calculations. One late night when the computer operator was obviously bored, he invited me into the sanctum sanctorum - the computer room. The computer was a CDC 3600 and had a curving CONSOLE about 8 feet long with several hundred lights and switches (in those days, there was no such thing as terminal input). On the far wall was a bank of a dozen ½" tape drives with vacuum column tape tension control. He loaded up a deck into the card reader (the only command input device) and started it. For the next ½ hour the computer PLAYED the Stars and Stripes Forever and assorted Sousa marches, using the tones on the CONSOLE (every light had its own tone) for the high low notes and the tape drives for the low notes. At the same time, all the lights on the CONSOLE were blinking on and off. Since I am now a full-time programmer, I finally appreciate the work it must have taken a system level programmer to do that. Talk about primitive audio devices!