Researchers based in New Zealand say they have restored the first known recording of computer-generated music which dates back to 1951 and was produced on a contraption made by Alan Turing.
As The Guardian reports, the recording opens with the British national anthem, but as those behind the discovery at the University of Christchurch (UIC) say, it shows the level to which Turing was an innovator in pushing music forward and into the current age we enjoy now. “Alan Turing’s pioneering work in the late 1940s on transforming the computer into a musical instrument has been largely overlooked,” the researchers said.
The recording was made at the Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester with the machine producing three melodies: ‘God Save the King’, ‘Baa, Baa Black Sheep’, and Glenn Miller’s swing classic ‘In the Mood’. You can hear the recording above.
