The First Song Made on an Alan Turing System

We all remember Alan Turing for his extraordinary work breaking the Enigma code, and for the terrible way he was treated. However, a lesser-known detail is that his work led to very interesting developments, among which stands out the first song made on a computer. Several copies of the song exist on the web, but the original recording was restored by a team of experts in New Zealand.

The Debate Over the First Song

There is still some dispute over the title of "first song generated on a computer". A key point is determining what we call a "song"—whether a complete piece or just a fragment. Several sources cite the Australian computer CSIRAC as the first to play music, but the problem is that no recording of its sessions is known. If we follow the available evidence, the path leads us to the Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester, where Alan Turing served as director. In 1951, an external BBC team made a curious recording with fragments of "God Save the King", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and "In the Mood" by Glenn Miller. These fragments were not created using traditional instruments, but with the computer that was running in the laboratory.

The Restoration

All that remains of that recording, besides the digital copies floating on the web, is a 12-inch acetate disc. Unfortunately, Jack Copeland and Jason Long from the University of Canterbury discovered that the frequencies of the recording had shifted, making it resemble nothing like what the computer originally emitted. The key to the restoration process were certain tones present that the original computer would have been unable to reproduce.

We must also add several natural hardware limitations. For example, a 196 Hz tone had an "equivalent" of 198.41 Hz. These frequency differences also revealed that the music was being played at an incorrect speed. Most likely, that was the fault of the acetate "cutter". The video above has an untreated version, but if you want to hear the already processed and corrected mp3 version, you can download it from here.

The Story Behind the Recording

As for who was responsible for the recording, history tells us that it was not Turing, but a friend of his, the mathematics professor Christopher Strachey. Apparently, Turing showed no interest in creating music, and his plan was to develop a "feedback" system that would let him know what was happening in the computer. Strachey obtained a copy of the programming manual for the Manchester computer, and after discovering its musical potential, Turing granted him access to the hardware for one night. The next day, everyone was amazed to hear "God Save the King" coming out of the speaker, and that became the best "curriculum vitae" for Strachey, as a few weeks later he was working at the laboratory.

Official announcement: