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Matt Westcott and
The Museum of the History of Science present

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The Mahler Project

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In 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was launched.

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A computer which gave a generation of schoolchildren
their first introduction to computer programming

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and started a computer revolution
in the UK and beyond.

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Its success was largely due to the BASIC
programming manual,

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written by the creator of Spectrum BASIC,
Steven Vickers.

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It gave its young readers a friendly, accessible
introduction to the world of computer programming.

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Chapter 19: BEEP.

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Summary: BEEP.

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If you haven’t already discovered that the
ZX Spectrum has a loudspeaker built into it,

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read the Introductory booklet
before carrying on.

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The loudspeaker is sounded by using the BEEP statement,

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BEEP duration, pitch. For example, type this program.

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When you run this, you should get the funeral
march from Mahler’s first symphony -

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the bit where the goblins bury the US Cavalry man.

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The chapter ended with a challenge to the reader
which probably wasn't meant to be taken too seriously.

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Exercise 2: Program the computer so that it plays
not only the funeral march,

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but also the rest of Mahler’s first symphony.

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Even if someone had the patience to type in
an entire symphony worth of BEEP commands,

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they would certainly run into other limitations:

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the Spectrum's 48K of memory,
and its limited sound capabilities.

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Remember that because there is only one
loudspeaker in the computer

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you can only play one note at a time.

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If you want any more you must sing it yourself.

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But if one Spectrum wasn't enough
to do justice to Gustav Mahler,

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then what about a whole orchestra of them?

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Oxford, UK
6th December 2014

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I'm Scott Billings, public engagement officer
at the Museum of the History of Science,

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and one of the exhibitions I worked on last
year was an exhibition called Geek Out!.

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Geek Out! was a slightly cheeky way of taking
lots of instruments from the museum's collection,

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that made a case for the fact that
there have always been geeks.

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There have been geeks throughout history,
into astronomy,

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geeks who are into amateur radio, and
mathematics and calculation and so on.

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And as part of that exhibition, we had an
area that was devoted to 1980s computing -

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the birth of the geek as we might think
of them, the computer programmer.

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So we had an idea - we thought, wouldn't it
be nice to have an event at the museum

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that picked up that idea, that got people to
come into the museum, visitors,

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and let them have a go on some of
this early hardware.

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Scott invited me to help run a ZX Spectrum
gaming section at the event.

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As I started gathering machines
from friends and contacts,

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I told him about my hare-brained idea of
putting them together into an orchestra.

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To my amazement, he was keen
to go along with it!

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The secret weapon would be the
Spectranet interface,

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a new piece of hardware that allows
the Spectrum to connect to the internet.

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It's previously been used for online games,
IRC chat, and even to post to Twitter -

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but here it provided the communication
channel between the Spectrums

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to keep them in sync.

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Dylan Smith, the creator of
the Spectranet,

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was on hand with 12 interfaces,
which we believe is a world record

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for the number of Spectrums
networked in one place.

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Throughout the Spectrum's life,
programmers found ways

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to squeeze better sound
out of the Spectrum,

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and the later models added
a dedicated sound chip

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to improve the audio
capabilities further.

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For full authenticity,
we didn't use any of this -

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just the plain BEEP instructions
demonstrated in the manual.

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Of course, we had a bit of
21st century assistance.

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Today it's easy enough to download a
MIDI version of the symphony from the web -

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and to convert that down into the
musical scores for 12 Spectrums

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is just a routine programming task.
But again, it was important

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that we stuck to the spirit
of the original challenge.

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We couldn't just get a more powerful
computer to trigger the notes:

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it had to come from the
Spectrums themselves.

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At the heart of the network
was a Raspberry Pi,

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but this was just providing
the time source -

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the conductor of the orchestra, if you like.

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It was not so busy in the day at the museum,
but as the moment approached,

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when Matt was going to link the Spectrums
together, and set the music going,

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the gallery just filled up and up,
and by the time that they were doing

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the final reboots and jiggling of wires
and things like that,

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we had a big crowd of people -
the gallery was filled with people.

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So there was a certain anticipation
in the air, when finally

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Matt and Dylan got all the Spectrums behaving
as they were supposed to behave -

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and then the beeps began.

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Of course, failures are inevitable
with 30 year old hardware,

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and at least one of the Spectrums
wasn't playing along.

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It should have joined in with the main
melody some time around... now.

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But it didn't.

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So this was the longest 30 seconds of my life.

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Due to time constraints, we only
played the third movement.

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The entire symphony is well over an hour,
and it's fair to say

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that the novelty would have worn off
after that long.

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But all the programming work was done -
we demonstrated that it worked,

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and to us, that was enough to
declare it a success.

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There was a big round of applause, for both
the hardware and the human input into the day.

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So we were really pleased with
the event at the museum,

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and our directors were very pleased too.

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News of the achievement quickly
reached Steven Vickers -

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the manual's author, and the person
who initially set the challenge.

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That is fantastic, and gave me great pleasure.

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But what a missed opportunity.
If I had known that all I had to do

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was set a seemingly impossible Spectrum
exercise and then, a mere 30 years later,

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people and Spectrums would band
together and carry it out,

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we could have achieved such great
things for the world.

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Dr Vickers is now on the look out
for a suitable follow-up challenge

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to be solved over the next 30 years.

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So perhaps, by the year 2050, we'll
be back again

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to see another piece of computing history
being made.