Life imitates art: the IBM 650 lives again!

IBM 1401 Mainframe, the Musical

When IBM chief maintenance engineer Jóhann Gunnarsson started tinkering with the IBM 1401 Data Processing System, believed to have been the first computer to arrive in his native Iceland in 1964, he noticed an electromagnetic leak from the machine's memory caused a deep, cellolike hum to come from nearby AM radios.

It was a production defect but, captivated, amateur musician Gunnarson and his colleagues soon learned how to reprogram the room-size business workhorse's innards to emit melodies that rank amongst the earliest in a long line of Scandinavian digital music.

Fast-forward four decades, and recently discovered tape recordings of Gunnarson's works form the basis of a touring song-and-dance performance, IBM 1401: A User's Manual. The show was composed by Gunnarson's son Jóhann Jóhannsson, with interpretive dance choreographed by Erna Omarsdotti, whose father is another IBM alum.

But never mind that. There's a video clip at the end of the article. It's boring.

The really cool thing about this article is the link to this web site of IBM 1401 movies and sounds. It includes sound clips of music played on the 1401's chain printer, and a link to Movies-n-Sounds of Antique Computers. In particular, this awesome movie of an IBM 650 starting up, and an audio clip of the 650's drum spinning up.

Actually, I came fairly close synthesizing that in Audacity, as you can hear in Vampire Megabyte
[ogg] [mp3], available soon on my upcoming CD, Coffee, Computers and Song.