Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!yale!lisper-bjorn
From: lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computer noises (was Re: Cray architecture)
Message-ID: <26388@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 88 16:30:17 GMT
References: <7762@alice.UUCP> <5029@nsc.nsc.com> <850@gethen.UUCP>
Sender: root@yale.UUCP
Reply-To: lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
Lines: 27

In article <850@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes:
....
>My three fave computer noise stories:
>
>I.  The line printers used with some earlier IBM systems had (as many
> still do) bands of type which continuously rotated, with hammers that
> were fired when the appropriate letter came by.  By selecting the output
> carefully, you could get the hammers to fire at a fixed frequency, and
> by varying the output you could change this frequency.  The story goes
> that someone programmed the thing to play the Star Spangled Banner,
> with the added fillip that on the "Rockets' Red Glare" passage, all of
> the doors to the automatic tape drives would flip open.
[II, III deleted]
>Number one may be apocryphal, but sounds reasonable.  Numbers two and
>three are definitely real.

I believe in it. When I became an undergrad in Stockholm in 1975 somebody at
the physics lab told me that they had a program on some machine that could
play music on a line printer by printing the proper characters at the right
time. (I think the melody was "Gotlandsk sommarnatt", by the way.) I never
heard it perform myself, though, so I can't guarantee the correctness of
this story.

This kind of art is definitely becoming extinct with the introduction of
laser printers....

Bjorn Lisper