CSIRAC, the first computer to play music, did so publicity in August 1951.

CSIRAC — the University’s giant electronic brain — has LEARNED TO SING!

…it hums, in bathroom style, the lively ditty, Lucy Long. CSIRAC’s song is the result of several days’ mathematical and musical gymnastics by Professor T. M. Cherry. In his spare time Professor Cherry conceived a complicated punched-paper programme for the computer, enabling it to hum sweet melodies through its speaker… A bigger computer, Professor Cherry says, could be programmed in sound-pulse patterns to speak with a human voice… https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/about/csirac/music/music.html

Reconstruction of the music played by CSIRAC
https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/about/csirac/music/reconstruction.html

CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, as displayed at the Melbourne Museum

 

Looks like a copy of Reason pulled a Pro Tools by making everyone use their hardware and gate kept everyone from using it by putting it in a museum. Super dongeling.

This is actually very cool but the line to use it back in the day must have looked like Iraq waiting for a turn to session with CSIRAC.

Punchtape rolls of toilet paper you feed into the midi channel that you can use in your favorite DAW today! How great, where was it when we had a covid toilet paper shortage?

I wonder if those dudes used just punch midi holes in TP sheets while on the John because they couldn't do it on mobile yet.

 

Pretty cool of them to use a printer as step sequencer though. I bet "check out the break I made during lunch Eunice" moments were century defining for them in the 50s.