ABSTRACT
The programming of music was not the “killer app” for which computers were invented. But audio technology figured prominently in the early uses of computers, particularly in the quest to improve the automation of one of the keystones of American industrial success-the telephone and communications infrastructure. More than ten years before IBM rose to prominence in the 1950s to become the world’s leading manufacturer of general-purpose computers, the founders of Hewlett-Packard produced their first product, the 200A Audio Oscillator. This rugged piece of testing equipment found its way into Walt Disney Studios where eight of them were used to produce sound effects for the movie Fantasia (1940).2 Bell Laboratories, the research and development division of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), was manufacturing calculators by the early 1940s and performing calculations remotely by Teletype connection, an early example of remote access computing using analog technology. In 1943, at the bidding of the United States Army, Bell Labs and resident engineer George Stibitz developed an analog relay-based calculator for weapons testing. The device was programmable by paper tape, providing the design for later control systems using hardwired, analog connections, not the least of which were early music synthesizers made by RCA and Siemens.
