(Written September 25, 2008 Declassified January 23, 2009)

I had my first visit to The National Museum Of Computing TNMOC with the intention of creating a piece of music out of the sounds there, it was fantastic. I am very honoured to have met Tony Sale, not just once but several times now and today I got to talk to him about the  workings of Colossus.

I was there to make several recordings of Colossus and a few other machines for quick project to show what it is I do. Colossus was the first machine to record and it was the hardest, it’s not the most musical and when it’s running perfectly there is very little musicality to it apart from the tape reader loop and the relays.

However When Colossus is made to make a mistake it can make some amazing sounds, such as the uniselector being turned and then reset, and the typewriter and thanks to Tony Sale I was able to find out how to do that.

I also recorded the Elliot 803 which is one of my favorites, The Tunny, An Amstrad CPC464, A Sirius booting up, an IBM card puncher, the machine hum of a 380Z Research Machine and and RM Nimbus.

I also filmed some of the machines I recorded, as I hope to edit a short video together of the project I am doing. Overall it was very good, even though it was a long day I had to leave at 8.30am and I didn’t get back til about 9pm at night, but checking the sounds as I walked round the museum on my headphones, I am certain I got some good recordings.