Early Computer Music Experiments in Australia and England PAUL DOORNBUSCH Australian College of the Arts, 55 Brady Street, South Melbourne, VIC 3205, Australia Email:
[email protected] This article documents the early experiments in both Australia had been developed, such as the ‘linear equations and England to make a computer play music. The experiments machine’, the ‘differential analyser’ and the ‘multi- in England with the Ferranti Mark 1 and the Pilot ACE register accounting machine’ (Hemstead and (practically undocumented at the writing of this article) and Worthington 2005: 110; Hally 2006: 11–13). However, fi those in Australia with CSIRAC (Council for Scienti c and the calculating machines still required significant Industrial Research Automatic Computer) are the oldest human intervention, so there was a desire to build an known examples of using a computer to play music. Significantly, they occurred some six years before the automatic calculator with some sort of system to store experiments at Bell Labs in the USA. Furthermore, the the data and the instructions for what to do with computers played music in real time. These developments were the data. important, and despite not directly leading to later highly There were some major technological advances at significant developments such as those at Bell Labs under the the time that allowed the realisation of an automatic direction of Max Mathews, these forward-thinking develop- calculator with memory. One such advance was the ments in England and Australia show a history of computing use of thermionic valves (vacuum tubes), as switching machines being used musically since the earliest development devices.