The computer that learnt to sing

An accident of design produced a 1970's mainframe that made music.

Excerpt:

Modern technology has implanted itself in our lives in such a way that we'd all be lost without our mobile phones and iPods. But once they leave us, do we feel nostalgic for the machines themselves? And if we did, could they respond in kind?

These are the questions that Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson asked himself after a chance conversation with his father led him to dig out a 35-year-old audio tape from the family home. It contained recordings of a strange workplace ritual in which an outdated mainframe computer, an IBM 1401, was given an emotional retirement ceremony that included sounds of the machine "singing".

Press cutting from The Telegraph - Nov 18, 2006