Ongoing History Daily: A computer music mistake

The first computer-generated music happened in 1951 at the Manchester Computing Machine Laboratory using scientist Alan Turing’s Mark II machine, which filled pretty much the entire ground floor of the building. It had been programmed to play three simple melodies, which were then recorded by a BBC broadcast unit outside. Only a single 12-inch acetate survives today, but of course, it was digitized long ago. However, it’s not an accurate recording.

The BBC cutting turntable was running too fast during the recording, capturing frequencies impossible for the Mark II to create. For decades, we heard things all wrong. Everything was at a different pitch. It took until just recently for the issue to be discovered. The recording has been cleaned up and corrected for pitch, giving us an exact representation of the first music ever made by a computer.