Continuing our exploration of the relationship between music and computing, it's inevitable to ask which was the first system programmed to sing. It wouldn't be hard to imagine it was some specially modified hardware, but in reality they used an IBM 704, installed at Bell Labs in New Jersey. The demo was so impressive that it earned a privileged place in one of the most important science fiction works of the last fifty years.
The first computer songs
The first computer-made song came out of Alan Turing's laboratory in 1951. The first "concert" of computer music was led by Pietro Grossi using a General Electric GE-115, which was distributed on seven-inch vinyl records in late 1967. Sixteen years between one event and another, marked by extraordinary advances in computing, and most importantly, its general availability. Systems exclusive to government agencies, laboratories and universities now had a place in the business world, and one of the pioneers was the IBM 704.
The IBM 704 at Bell Labs
An IBM 704 was installed in the offices that Bell Labs had in Murray Hill, New Jersey. There, John Larry Kelly Jr., Carol Lochbaum and Louis Gerstman created with the accompaniment of Max Mathews (the same one of the Music IV language and the fabulous Graphic 1 platform) a special version of Daisy Bell, a song written by Harry Dacre. The demonstration went down in history on its own merits, but there was an extra detail.
Arthur C. Clarke was there. Available information suggests that the writer had gone to visit his friend and colleague John Pierce at the Murray Hill offices, and had the opportunity to witness the IBM 704 singing Daisy Bell. Clarke was so amazed by the demonstration that he decided to incorporate it into his film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. The exact scene is... unforgettable:
Contradictions and the source
Now, when exploring this event we find many contradictory sources. Some insist that the computer used was an IBM 7094, and that the song was written in 1961. That would be chronologically impossible, since the 7094 debuted in 1962. The "purest" source we found takes us to an article dated March 1997, saved on the old Bell Labs Innovations site, which confirms the use of an IBM 704 in 1962.
