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Most important landmarks in computing history

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carlsson

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One of my aspirations is to be a symphonic hobby composer, i.e. I am totally self-trained when it comes to composing music and I'm only doing it on irregular basis.

I've thought that some day I should try to compose a suite of "serious" music, i.e. for symphonic orchestra or band. I know the instruments quite well when it comes to useful range and a little about technical difficulties. But to make a suite, I'm thinking that I need a theme to get inspired by.

Now, I don't know if any modern composer has already written works inspired by computing history, but no matter what, this was one idea that came to my mind last week. I could probably think both about computers, the conditions and environment around when it was made and much more.

Typically I think a suite should be about 3-5 movements (parts). Of course I should not take on a larger task than I could finish, but given those conditions, exactly what do you think should be covered? My thinking is something like this:

1. Babbage (Difference engine, analytic engine, Ada Lovelace etc)
2. ENIAC (or maybe that German computer that predated it?)
3. Cray (and/or PDP, something around the age of VLSI technology?)
4. Today? (IBM Blue Gene, advanced video games?)

Is there any important landmarks I have overlooked? Maybe something more about video gaming, like Pong / Atari 2600 / C64 / SNES etc?
 
Definately, you should use the Zuse Z3
I think, to add a sense of struggle, something on the interplay between the market force of Microsoft, which did help unify the industry, and so on, even though they're monopolistic, and the stuggle of innovation to break out of the Microsoft mold.
Of course, this sounds very Wagnerian

patscc
 
Neat idea! I really think you should include at least one microcomputer (the Apple II) and, perhaps, some circus (or funeral) music at the end to represent Windows.
 
Frank Zappa was a pioneer in the electronically synthesized music field. Captain Beefheart once accused him of "writing music for instruments that haven't been invented yet". In another interview, some years later he retracted the comment, noting that it no longer applied, since the invention of the synclaviar. On one of his albums, (I forget which one) FZ included a disclaimer to the effect that none of the music on that album had been artificially produced, but that all of the sounds had been created by electronically altering the sound of real instruments. I dunno what all this has to do with your project, just thought I'd throw it out there.
BTW, FZ has more web space dedicated to him than to any other composer, modern or otherwise.

--T
 
I was always partial to Tangerine Dream(TD), and Laurie Anderson, myself.

Of course, one of the reasons for this is that TD toured with a massive setup of blinking-light equipment, patch cords flying all over the place, and Laurie Anderson was on of the early adopters of the Farilight CMI and Synclavier, the 1st generation samplers. For those of you've that have never heard of TD, if you've ever seen the film 'Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind' , the scene where they're asking Stevie Wonder something about his modular Moog, sort of gives you an idea what TD on tour looked like.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea what the first production computer was that you could do more then just "beep" with ?

patscc
 
Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea what the first production computer was that you could do more then just "beep" with ?
Click to expand...

Wasn't that an IBM mainframe at Bell Labs? At least, that was the first to do synthesized speech, back around 1963. I think the Moog machine was the first music synthesizer, wasn't it?

--T
 
Thanks for all the comments so far, and I suppose more will come. Seen over a 200+ year time perspective, does Microsoft really pose such a large milestone? I know what they have done to the IBM PC over the last 20 years to make it into a household item, but would this not have happened even without Bill Gates?

Maybe the Arpanet (now Internet) as a such also would be worth thinking about? Oh well, so far it is just my brainstorming.
 
It might have happened, anyway, you're right.

I was thinking more along the lines of the crossroads we're now at, Microsoft's predominance in the marketplace has focused a lot of developer attention along similar paths, analogous to the way a laser focuses it's energy into an amplified wave.
Sure, it could have happened differently. It's not the 'Microsoft', it's the dynamics we now have. A driving force behind development is now surpressing evolution, and now, more than ever, developers are choosing different paths, some of which Microsoft is trying to surpress.
This struggle is what I find interesting. It's nothing new, it's why PC's ran DOS instead of CP/M 86, it's why RIMM, even though initially endorsed by Intel, was very quietly given the 'coup-de-grace' when they relaesed the first chipsets supporting DDR, and abandoned efforts to bring out server-class RIMM chipsets.
If you want to tell a story, in whatever medium, you need some sort of conflict to keep the whole thing going. And what bigger conflict than the one between the most widely used platform today, and the avatars out there ?

(Note: Before this turns into a flame-fest, I'm not a particular fan of any particular platform out there, especially Wintel. You just, unfortunately, can't ignore they're Triffid-like presence.)

patscc
 
Have you considered including analog computers/calculators in your opus? Specifically, I'm thinking of a kind of non-programmable computer- the slide rule. What would be more suited for its musical representation than a slide whistle or a theremin? Napier's bones preceeded the slide rule, but how would you musically represent them? Wood blocks?

It might be interesting to contrast "analog music" against "digital music". I don't mean music produced by those two kinds of computers- I mean music representing the two types. Smooth and flowing vs. staccato, melodious vs. cacophonous, etc.

But what do I know? I can barely play the flute-O-phone.

alltare
 
I'm open for all suggestions. I definitely not know all the history behind computing. When you say slide rule, I also start to think in terms of the abacus. I thought where to set a starting point; the Greek seem to have been more into the actual maths than making a machine to do it (which I can see if it was impossible back then).

John Napier's slide rule (1614) seems to predate Charles Babbage's difference engine (1823, analytic engine described 1837) by a little more than two centuries, although there was one J.H. Müller in 1786 which never built his machine.

We'll see if I get to do something about it, maybe for the summer vacation.
 
One of my aspirations is to be a symphonic hobby composer, i.e. I am totally self-trained when it comes to composing music and I'm only doing it on irregular basis.

I've thought that some day I should try to compose a suite of "serious" music, i.e. for symphonic orchestra or band. I know the instruments quite well when it comes to useful range and a little about technical difficulties. But to make a suite, I'm thinking that I need a theme to get inspired by.

Now, I don't know if any modern composer has already written works inspired by computing history, but no matter what, this was one idea that came to my mind last week. I could probably think both about computers, the conditions and environment around when it was made and much more.

Typically I think a suite should be about 3-5 movements (parts). Of course I should not take on a larger task than I could finish, but given those conditions, exactly what do you think should be covered? My thinking is something like this:

1. Babbage (Difference engine, analytic engine, Ada Lovelace etc)
2. ENIAC (or maybe that German computer that predated it?)
3. Cray (and/or PDP, something around the age of VLSI technology?)
4. Today? (IBM Blue Gene, advanced video games?)

Is there any important landmarks I have overlooked? Maybe something more about video gaming, like Pong / Atari 2600 / C64 / SNES etc?
_________________
Anders Carlsson


WOW. Only a Swede or Finn could have conceived such a musical aspiration. I'm an old trumpet-player (still have a Committee-Custom but few teeth). Went to Berklee in the old building in 61 and married a New England Conservatory starlet who wanted more security than an itinerant Canuck musician could offer and left the field, physically at least. She,
on the other hand remained in the field until her recent death.

Now retired in a canadian backwater, but with a multitude of computers including an ST Mega with the midi ports, a Korg Ex8000 and a ream of
old Hi-Fi equipment. Alas no 4-track recorder. Still have some scores I wrote and altho my strength was improvisation, I have aspirations to put my computer and musical background to use, and likely simply need an
impetus to get my strong musical juices flowing. While I don't have the classical composition background you appear to have, I would be willing to contribute what I could. I'm overwhelmed by the score of The 3 Sisters of Belleville for example, including the use of definitely non-musical instruments such as a vacuum-cleaner. Of course there is also the use of the Commodore 1541 as a musical instrument, and numerous other equipment which would never be considered as a source of musical tones.
I could see a much expanded timeframe than what you present here. Perhaps we could take this to private E-mail.

Computer nerds, being what we are, could wind up debating like astrologers would, over the make-up of Gustav Holst's "The Planets".

Lawrence
 
ISR an old thread on classiccmp where Allison wrote about her and some other DEC programmers writing some music programs on a "Mark 2 ?"
It was way beyond my comprehension at the time and still is. Perhaps
she can ellucidate and make more sense than this garbled version is.

Lawrence
 
What about player pianos, music boxes, and that sort of thing? After all, they are essentially programmed instruments.
Come to think of it, it'd be pretty cool if you could make the percussion run off a difference engine.
 
Or even the Jacquard Loom, the grandaddy of anything that uses punched cards ? Or Bach's structure of his canons and fugues ? Or, back to the greeks, developed algorithms, certainly a milestone, the discovery that different tasks can share a common element, and that you can break down the common element into easily-describable, 'atomic' tasks.

Where do you start ? Where do you stop ? carlsson, this might take more than a summer or so. J.R.R. Tolkien springs to mind, who ended up taking 20 years or so to write his story. Good luck !

patscc
 
re music ideas

re music ideas

Wasn't the machine at Iowa State Universty built before the first Zues computer? I think so.
I think you should talk to a few more people aabot your chronology. In my opinion the computer industry has gone through several distinct phases. (Ignoring the "Boole and Babbage" days) Phase 1 was the years between 1937 and 1950, which were the "exploration and definition days". These were the days when no two machines were alike and virtually all were done in university or government labs. Phase 2 were 1950 to 1959. This was the start of the commercial computing era, when IBM, UNIVAC, Burroughs, NCR, Bendix, Royan/McBee, ALWACS, Ferraanti, and aa few more made production machines. None were alike in design or specifications, there were few if any standards and the most of any single model sold was probably the IBM 650. ( Woould you believe that even Philco, Westinghouse and General Mills got into that early act?)
The next big event was the maturity of the production of yhe transistor after 10 years of R&D. At the same time, the availability of the transistor forced the completion of the design and production of the Coincident Current Core Memory which was absolutly required in order to take advantage of the switching speed of transisotors. These two events caused the opening up of the industry to many more creatve people because they did not have to work around some scheme for making a memory that was the controlling influence on the design of the rest of the computer. The "Stored Program" concept came into it's own becase the program instructions and the data they processed were both written to, and accessed from memory in parallel "words" Suddenly, almost overnight, good computers could be designed that were inexpensive, fast and reliable. The makers of the traditional huge "big iron" computers could make theirs even bigger, faster and more reliable too, and they understood that their market was the corporate and governmental data processing business. The door for the rest of the computer applications was wide open. Between 1960 and about 1972 more computer companies were formed and often acquired after a few years than at any time except MAYBE the first 10 or so years of the microcompter era. I can think of probably 25 or more companies that came out of the woodwork in those years, and I have seen a list of just about every computer ever made, and there are at least two or three times as many as I can think of. Those of us who were working in that part of the industry were having the same kink of fun as we foond later when the personal compter era arrived.
Of course the next phase is the era of the microcomputer and more specifically, the Personal computer which started in about 1973 or 74 and as far as we know (because we are too deep in the forest to NOT see the trees) ia atikll going on. But I suspect we are in thevery beginning of the nest phase which is the s"wireless ea".

Incidently, in the spring of 1961 I was working in Wshington, DC and we had to set up an exhibit at a national Cartographer's convention. As we were setting up oour booth we heard music coming from the end of the long aisle we were in. We went to see what it was sisnce it sounded nice, but strange too. Lo and behold, i was a new macine being shown for the first time in public, called the DEC PDP-1 and it was running a program to play Bach Fuges. (is that spelled right?) That is the first machine I ever heard that was playing a programmed score. I had heard many machines playing music that was developed by the clock and unintentionally broadcast to a radio.

As usual I do run on and on, but I can't seem to help it and mabe I've given you some food fo thought. Good luck with it and I hope you do it!
Ray
 
Keep running on, Ray- no one's complaining. You oughta write a book.

alltare
 
Micom 2000 said:
While I don't have the classical composition background you appear to have
Click to expand...
Heh. I don't, I'm self-trained but have acquired the taste through playing myself and listening to such music.

My intention may not to give a 101% accurate reprensentation of computing in terms of music, but more something to inspire me. Recently I found a (probably not published) suite of music inspired from paintings by van Gogh, and it encompassed four paintings, however maybe not the four art professors would claim as the most important ones.

Computer nerds, being what we are, could wind up debating like astrologers would, over the make-up of Gustav Holst's "The Planets".
Click to expand...
But Holst tried to encapture the character of the Roman gods who gave name to the planets, not the planets themselves. Considering the means to explore each planet back then, there was not much else he could do. :)

olddataman said:
Phase 1 between 1937 and 1950 [..]Phase 2 were 1950 to 1959. [..] The next big event was the maturity of the production of yhe transistor after 10 years of R&D. [..] Of course the next phase is the era of the microcomputer and more specifically, the Personal computer which started in about 1973 or 74
Click to expand...
Good points, many thanks.
 
Re: re music ideas

Re: re music ideas

olddataman said:
Wasn't the machine at Iowa State Universty built before the first Zues computer? I think so. quote]

Yeah, John Atanasoff who had Mauchly's patent thrown out. Mauchly had freely "borrowed" much of Altanasoffs research. But the Altanasoff-Berry computer wasn't actually functioning till the early 40s and ISTR a nerd at the University of Saskatchewan had one functioning in the 37-39 period.
I remember seeing a photo of him and his machine but can't remember where I saw it. On the other hand it could be tricks of memory, and the
picture was of Atanasoff.


[ I think you should talk to a few more people aabot your chronology. In my opinion the computer industry has gone through several distinct phases. (Ignoring the "Boole and Babbage" days) Phase 1 was the years between 1937 and 1950, which were the "exploration and definition days". These were the days when no two machines were alike and virtually all were done in university or government labs. Phase 2 were 1950 to 1959. This was the start of the commercial computing era, when IBM, UNIVAC, Burroughs, NCR, Bendix, Royan/McBee, ALWACS, Ferraanti, and aa few more made production machines. None were alike in design or specifications, there were few if any standards and the most of any single model sold was probably the IBM 650. ( Would you believe that even Philco, Westinghouse and General Mills got into that early act?)quote]

Agree with you completely on the time periods, but I know that IBM only
leased the machines, at least up to 1956, when I stopped working on them. I think it was UNIVAC's competition that forced IBM into outright selling.

Lawrence
Click to expand...
 
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