{"id":5729,"date":"2003-07-17T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-17T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2003\/07\/17\/5729\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:32:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:32:22","slug":"5729","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2003\/07\/17\/5729\/","title":{"rendered":"…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember not too long ago when I posted something about all the tubes I acquired? Well, as part of that I acquired some plans for the HAL-4096, the first computer ever used to demonstrate the synthesis of music. Anyway, just now I received some email back from one of the people who worked on it, Dave Cox:
\n
\nSteve,<\/p>\n

Forgive my tardy response. I’ve been working 20hrs\/day and this fell to a lower priority.<\/p>\n

Hal Chamberlin and I were friends from 1963 to 1970, and in business together from 1971 to 1986 when he took a very lucrative offer from Ray Kurzweil in Boston. Hal now works for Young Chang in Korea (half in the USA, half time in Korea).<\/p>\n

I helped Hal build the HAL-4096 so I know all about it. There are many things in our history together that were “firsts” in the industry. I have so much of it that I don’t need more, but I thank you for the offer.<\/p>\n

If you have any questions about the 4096 I can try to answer them. For example, the core memory planes were ordered from a Junk Yard in California. Hal designed the core-driver circuit and I purchased the components, laid out the PC boards and wire wrapped the backplane that Hal designed. The processor, as I recall, was designed from discrete circuits. We were Freshmen at NCSU (Electrical Engineering program) when we started the 4096. I don’t know how we had to time to do this because we both had jobs to earn extra income for our “hobbies”. It was a long term plan that came to fruition during 1968 (as I recall). It was the most important exhibit at the NCSU Engineer’s Fair (I was chairman of the Fair that year), and required a whole classroom. There were crowds that visited it. However, the demo was somewhat basic; not designed for flash and whistles for the general populace. However, the Professors and other engineering students were very impressed. It was a massive piece of work done by two people… but don’t forget… I was the support person, Hal was the brains and vision on that project.<\/p>\n

I haven’t heard from Hal in about a year, so I don’t know if my contact info is still valid.<\/p>\n

Let me know if I can help you in any other way. This was a very early computer, and may have been the earliest one of its magnitude done by students at a University. If there is any way I can be of service in the future let me know.<\/p>\n

Dave<\/font><\/p>\n

Wow, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember not too long ago when I posted something about all the tubes I acquired? Well, as part of that I acquired some plans for the HAL-4096, the first computer ever used to demonstrate the synthesis of music. Anyway, just now I received some email back from one of the people who worked on it,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-found-things","category-moved-from-livejournal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15902,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions\/15902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}