The Oldest Known Recordings of Computer Generated Music

Posted over 3 years ago

From good old 1951, and courtesy of the BBC...


The music was played on the successor to Manchester's "Baby"

A scratchy recording of Baa Baa Black Sheep and a truncated version of In the Mood are thought to be the oldest known recordings of computer generated music.

The songs were captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester.

The recording has been unveiled as part of the 60th Anniversary of "Baby", the forerunner of all modern computers.

The tunes were played on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Baby Machine.

The previous oldest known recordings were made on an IBM mainframe computer at Bell Labs in the US in 1957.

You can listen, too!

Comments (2)

  1. Bartleby says

    Happy birthday to Baby!!! -- The whole story is on repeat on the multimedia BBC platform from radio to TV and I suspect the iPlayer ;)

    Permalink posted 06/18/2008
  2. Cody B says

    What a cute Baby! And just look what baby has done!

    Permalink posted 06/18/2008

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