Alan Turing A Musical Innovator? First Recording Of Computer-Generated Music Restored After 65 Years

Researchers from New Zealand have restored the earliest known recording of computer-generated music, which was created nearly 65 years ago on a gigantic computer devised by the famous Alan Turing. Researchers from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch restored the recording created in 1951 using a BBC outside-broadcasting unit and a portable acetate disk. The recording, which begins with the United Kingdom's "God Save the Queen," also includes the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and the Glenn Miller hit "In The Mood." "Today all that remains of the recording session is a 12-inch single-sided acetate disc, cut by the BBC's technician while the computer played. The computer itself was scrapped long ago, so the archived recording is our only window on that historic soundscape," the researchers said in a statement Monday. The recording captured on the acetate disk was originally played on a massive computer, which occupied most of the ground floor of Turing's Computing Machine Laboratory.