IBM 1401

Fri, 09/21/2007 - 6:20pm by Employee 37

In 1971, the father of Icelandic musician and composer Johann Johannsson, bemoaning the deaccession of his office IBM 1401, and in one of the earliest examples of techno-romanticizational archival preservation(TM), made a recording of the sounds and electromagnet waves that the 1401 produced, utilizing a radio receiver and a reel-to-reel tape machine. It was nearly 30 years before his son rearranged these recordings, combined them with excerpts from an original audio instruction manual, and set the whole thing to a post-modern orchestral score. IBM 1401: A Users Manual is the result. You can click here to read a story from NPR's Song of the Day and listen to a sample track from the album.