Computer sound synthesis in 1951: The music of CSIRAC

An Australian-built "automatic computer" known as CSIRAC, was one of the world's earliest stored program electronic digital computers. Although the music performed by the CSIRAC may seem crude and unremarkable compared to the most advanced musical developments of the time, it was the first music in the world to be performed on a computer, and the means of production lay at the leading edge of technological sophistication at that time. These first steps of using a computer in a musical sense occurred in isolation, but they were interesting, because the leap of imagination in using the flexibility of a general-purpose computer to create music and the programming ingenuity required to achieve it were significant.