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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
GUEST,CJB the very first computer music (16) RE: the very first computer music 29 Sep 16


In the 1960s I wrote a programme in Fortran 2D on punched cards for making music on the IBM 1620 at Loughborough University. When we graduated in 1971 my parents and some relatives attended the ceremony. After this I was happily showing them around the campus, and also the computer room. I wanted to demo. my computer music programme. But it failed to load. It turned out that my brother - only 11 at the time - had shuffled the cards whilst I was not looking.

As an aside the computer had two printers: a huge IBM line printer, and an old fashioned typewriter. This latter had individual keys and made a right racket. Someone printed out the entire core of a programme in hex. for his degree dissertation. If only he has thought of adjusting the frequency of the keys hitting the paper he might have created a synthetic drum machine (of sorts).


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