World’s first recorded computer music restored

University of Canterbury composer Jason Long and Prof. Jack Copeland, who restored the 65-year-old recording.(Photo: AFP)

Scientists in New Zealand on Monday said they have restored the world’s earliest known recording of computer-generated music, created over 65 years ago using programming techniques devised by pioneering British computer scientist Alan Turing.

In 1951, a BBC outside-broadcast unit in Manchester in the UK used a portable acetate disc cutter to capture three melodies played by a primeval computer.

This gigantic computer filled much of the ground floor of Turing’s Comput-ing Machine Laboratory.

It was young schoolteacher and pianist Christopher Strachey who first programmed the UK national anthem God Save the King, debugging his programme during an epic all-night session with Turing’s enormous computer. Strachey later became known as one of Britain’s pioneering computer scientists.

The complete 1951 recording included God Save the King, nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep and Glenn Miller hit In The Mood. Decades later Professor Jack Copeland from University of Canterbury in New Zealand and fellow researcher Jason Long had to do some electronic sleuthing to recreate the historic sound accurately.

The researchers were able to calculate exactly how much the recording had to be speeded up in order to reproduce the original sound of the computer.