The music reminds you of the oldest arcade video games. But it’s even older than that. Those computer-generated sounds date to 1968.
Yes, computers could make music in the late 60s. And other art too. That’s the message delivered by the classic film above, a look inside Bell Labs, AT&T’s old blue-sky research division, which produced such inventions as the laser, transistor, the C programming language, and the Unix operating system.
Today, we use computers in just about every creative field, from design to music to photography. But in 1968, computers were thought of primarily as mathematical tools. The Bell film seeks to explode this notion.
As the film begins, we see a pair of engineers using light pens to draw circuit board designs onto the screen of a computer called Graphic 1, and the machine simulates the circuit to see if it works as expected. Then we witness other machines doing art, music, even speech. Machines created the entire score for the documentary, and at one point, we hear a computer-generated voice singing “Daisy Bell.”
One of the most interesting sequences is a collaboration between a graphic artist and a computer scientist working to create to a film via computer. “What spellbinds me as an idea is that I’ll be able to sit someplace in a railroad station and write a movie or maybe pick up a telephone eventually and write a movie,” the designer says.
Given that mobile phones were still, well, under development—and smartphones were still decades away—his view of the future is rather impressive. But that was Bell Labs.
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