Tag Archives: music

Looking Backwards and Forwards

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In this issue:

  • Backwards – World’s First Smartphone, Music from Mainframes
  • Forwards – IBM 5 in 5, The Era of Cognitive Computing
  • Forwards – IBM’s Green Initiatives

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Looking Backwards – World’s First Smartphone, Music from Mainframes

Our December theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ‘corporate history’, and Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist, has shared with us some very interesting highlights from IBM’s history such as the fact that IBM invented the world’s first smartphone.  It was also fascinating to learn of the musical compositions done from mainframes, perhaps the forerunner of the digital music trend of today.  Here are the some of the highlights from looking backwards:

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Looking Forwards – IBM 5 in 5, The Era of Cognitive Computing

Each December, IBM unveils the 5 in 5 — five predictions about technology innovations that will change the way we work, live and play within the next five years. The ideas come from the thousands of biologists, engineers, mathematicians and medical physicians in our Research labs around the world — IBM has the world’s largest industrial research organization.

In the next five years, computers will begin to mimic and augment the senses, helping us become more aware and more productive.  Today, we see the beginnings of sensing machines in things like self-parking cars–and the future is wide open.  From the company that built Watson, the Jeopardy!-winning computer, here are five upcoming technology advances that will change your world:

Touch: You will be able to touch through your phone
Sight: A pixel will be worth a thousands words
Hearing: Computers will hear what matters
Taste: Digital taste buds will help you to eat smarter
Smell: Computers will have a sense of smell

Read more about it here:  http://wp.me/p2kcos-Bp

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Looking Forwards – IBM’s Green Initiatives

Building a Smarter Planet is a fundamental part of who IBM is as a company, and green initiatives are a key part of the focus for the present and future.  Here are a few highlights from the past week:

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Stay Connected with The Greater IBM Connection by:

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

Christmas Carols on the IBM 704

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The December 2012 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ‘corporate history’, and Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist, will be sharing with us some of the highlights from IBM’s history.

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To follow up on the post about the IBM 1401 musical suite by a Scandanavian composer, here’s an anecdote with a Holiday twist from retired IBMer John Van Gardner, an early pioneer in the kinds of computer music that inspired that suite! This excerpt is from file #17.

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I had gotten interested in audio amplifiers when I built a high fidelity system in the navy.  During my school on the 704 as I learned how to program it I got an idea about how to use it as a square wave generator.  The 704 had four indicator lights on the console that could be turned on and off with program sense instructions.  They were used to give a visual indication of the progress of the program.  I keyed in a program using index instructions to turn sense light 1 on and off at different frequencies.  I connected the output of the sense light to the microphone input of the PA system.  The PA amplifier could not reproduce a square wave so the sound that came out sounded like a clean sign wave.

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The IBM 704, introduced in 1954, was a large-scale computer designed for engineering and scientific calculations.

Some time later my daughter Joy received a toy xylophone with a songbook with simple one note songs like “Three Blind Mice” and some Christmas carols.  I took the book to work early one morning and connected the output of sense light 1 to the microphone input of the PA system.  I found the numbers to make the 704 play the musical scale.  Jack Bellinger came in later and heard it.  He showed it to Cal Jackson a Lockheed System Programmer and he modified the 704 assembly program to equate the scale note names to the numbers necessary to create that note.

A few weeks later in December 1957 we had a Christmas party in the programming area at Lockheed and Cal had made a tape that had all the Christmas carols from the little xylophone book on it.  It would play all the songs then rewind and start over….

I always wondered if I was the first person to play music with a digital computer.  I found the answer to that question when the internet came into being.  There were quit a few people that did it before me but at least I did it independently.

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Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

The Soothing Music of ‘IBM 1401: A User’s Manual’

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The December 2012 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ‘corporate history’, and Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist, will be sharing with us some of the highlights from IBM’s history.

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Speaking of the 1401, are Holiday preparations leaving you a feeling a bit stressed? Here is an artistic interpretation of the soothing musical interpretation of the IBM 1401, the 2006 composition “IBM 1401: A User’s Manual” (http://www.ausersmanual.org/) by Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson.  This is a video by Magnus Helgasun.

Inspired by a recording of an IBM mainframe computer which Jóhann’s father, Jóhann Gunnarsson, made on a reel-to-reel tape machine more than 30 years ago, the piece was originally written to be performed by a string quartet as the accompaniment to a dance piece by the choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir. For the album version, Jóhann rewrote the entire score, and it was recorded by a sixty-piece string orchestra. He also added a new final section and incorporated electronics alongside those original tape recordings of the singing computer.

Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist