RE invention of this type of translator:
I have an excellent Spectrum+2(Sinclair home computer)from the early 80's.That can be made to produce music via an on-board facilty using eg 2 to represent a crochet,4 for a minim etc and upper/lower case letters a-g etc to convey the octave.
Strikes me as very similar to abc.
Any Walshaw/Sinclair connection,apart from the fairly obvious way of representing music in text?