[HN Gopher] Restoring the first recording of computer music (2018)
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       Restoring the first recording of computer music (2018)
        
       Author : OJFord
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2026-03-14 08:28 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bl.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bl.uk)
        
       | max-m wrote:
       | In case the embedded SoundCloud player refuses to show up, here's
       | a direct link: https://soundcloud.com/the-british-library/first-
       | recording-o...
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | Ah, thanks, I had the same issue, should've thought to include
         | that.
         | 
         | While I'm commenting: I think the (original) title undersells
         | the significance - the recording is from Turing's computing lab
         | at Manchester, 1951.
        
         | thenoblesunfish wrote:
         | "This audio is embedded from SoundCloud and requires cookies to
         | function. To view this content, please enable analytics and
         | marketing cookies using the cookies opt-in at the bottom of
         | your screen." - lame!
        
           | masfuerte wrote:
           | You can download it from SoundCloud using yt-dlp.
           | 
           | https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
        
         | morganastra wrote:
         | "The machine's not enjoying this - it's gone on strike"
         | 
         | "the machine's obviously not in the mood"
         | 
         | Really fascinating to hear these little snippets from someone
         | (the computer operator probably?) on the recording!
        
       | brudgers wrote:
       | Tangential: Usagi Electric plays Doom on a Bendix G-15:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no0CkQk7id0
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | Also very tangentially related... I remember the first time I
         | heard a real recorded music (not a chiptune) playing from a
         | computer. It was on my Commodore 64, at home, in 1986: I had a
         | copy of a floppy disk with a partial recording of the song
         | _Kung-Fu Fighting_.
         | 
         | It looked (and sounded) like this:
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/-rN-Mwblqbw
         | 
         | I don't know who made that nor why but that disk spread like
         | wildfire: we were all making copies of it and it felt like we
         | were living in the future.
        
       | dbdr wrote:
       | > It was a challenge to write routines that would keep the
       | computer tolerably in tune, since the Mark II could only
       | approximate the true pitch of many notes: for instance the true
       | pitch of G3 is 196 Hertz but the closest frequency that the Mark
       | II could generate was well off the note at 198.41 Hertz.
       | 
       | There are several notes that sounds significantly out of tune, a
       | bit similar to a beginner violinist. Which is kind of poetic in a
       | way. The first computer to play music (in 1951!) had not mastered
       | it yet.
        
         | MomsAVoxell wrote:
         | It's truly fascinating that it was out of tune because of the
         | similarities of the Mark II timing with sound itself .. but
         | that also computing rapidly, rapidly started operating in a
         | much higher frequency band and is capable these days of bending
         | audio realities in other astonishing ways ..
        
       | fnord77 wrote:
       | it plays "God Save the King"
        
       | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
       | More technical detail and background here:
       | 
       | https://spectrum.ieee.org/alan-turing-how-his-universal-mach...
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-18 23:01 UTC)