Just in time for the approaching 60th anniversary of the first commercially available general purpose computer — The Ferranti Mark 1 — the BBC unveils what may be the earliest surviving electronic recording captured on that very pioneering device at the University of Manchester, some time during the autumn of 1951. Oddly enough, the recording wasn’t even recorded separately, saved only as part of a news broadcast.
From the BBC:
Paul Doornbusch, a computer music composer and historian at the New Zealand School of Music, told BBC News.
“As far as I know it’s the earliest recording of a computer playing music in the world, probably by quite a wide margin.”
The previous oldest known recordings were made on an IBM mainframe computer at Bell Labs in the US in 1957, he said.
…
following the recording, a university engineer called Frank Cooper asked if he could have a copy. Unable to give him the original, the BBC team cut him another version.
“At the time of the recording outside broadcasts were recorded on to acetate disks,” explained Mr Burton. “You can hear the presenter tell the recording engineer in the van ‘lift Jim’ and that meant lift the cutter off to stop recording.”
During the session, the temperamental machine managed to work its way through Baa Baa Black Sheep, God Save the King and part of In the Mood.
Following one aborted attempt, a laughing presenter says: “The machine’s obviously not in the mood.”
The disc was eventually passed to the CCS, who, along with the University of Manchester, has released the recording to mark the 60th anniversary of the Ferranti machine’s forerunner.
Plenty of additional information about the Ferranti is available at computer50.org, including an incredible sales brochure produced originally to promote the (then very bizarre) new machine.
All machines of this type can do THREE things:
- They can perform all the operations of arithmetic exceedingly rapidly…
- They can remember a great many numbers…
- They can make decisions…
It can make decisions! Wikipedia, though, makes an important distinction, noting Australia’s CSIRAC beat The Ferranti to the first electronic composition by at least several months. While CSIRAC’s music was never recorded, original copies of the program allowed researchers to meticulously reconstruct that first recording. (note: I’ve stored the audio files below on my web space so I’m not leeching off their bandwith — see previous links to reach original document and audio files)
reconstruction of CSIRAC's 1951 rendition of 'Colonel Bogey': Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (30)
(h/t AudioLemon)
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