Why did the HAL 9000 computer sing “Daisy Bell” in the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke?
Maybe this video clip, taken from a documentary where Arthur C. Clarke is visiting Bell Labs back in the early 60s, will give you an answer to that question.
Jim Myers
In a junk store in Knoxville, Tennessee in early 1970′s a friend and I found a documentary 33 RPM record of Bell Lab’s singing computer performing “Daisy Bell.” We came to the same conclusion.
Felipe Venancio
This is weird.
In the end of the video you can hear in portuguese: “Nós estaremos em contato instantâneo com o mundo. Mas o que lhe diremos?” (We will be in instant contact with the world. But what will we say?).
Tim Giachetti
heheheh, Daisy the kitty woke right up for this, I’ve been singing it to her for years. She ran right over for hugs.
Johnny Cat
The Bell Labs version has similar inflections as an Amish person, which makes this double-neat for me! Also, kick-ass Hamlet reading, there.
laamish
I remember hearing this exact rendition in the mid 60s at a science museum in Ohio. It was right next to the working traffic light mock-up.
Cheap thrills for a ten year old.
Mike Snider
I heard the same recording around 1965-6, when my father was doing his doctoral research on computer voice recognition at Case Institute (now Case/Western) in Cleveland. At the time, the ‘Daisy-voice’ was astounding quality for a computer; my Dad’s “advanced” setup could only generate and recognize the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 — so maybe it could sing that Feist song from a couple years ago…
Larry Anderson
The voice synthesis part seems to be in its entirety on the record Album “First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival” published by Creative Computing in 1979. It also includes a really nice computer generated Toccata. Hey it’s on-line here:
http://www.vintagecomputermusic.com/
The last track is the one.
make sure to check out:
J.S. Bach/Toccata & Fugue in d Minor
J.S. Bach/Suite for Orchestra #2 in b minor (excerpt)
and
Johann Wanhal/Rondo from Sonata in B flat for Clarinet and Piano
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