COPElAND & lONG | 243
note-loops (e.g. Turing’s instruction TN) extends the number of playable notes. For instance,
adding ten extra beats to either the primary or the padded form of the 148.81 Hz note-loop
displayed previously results in a loop that plays 109.65 Hz, which is very close to A 2 (110 Hz);
the primary form is <3H, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5>. The following loop plays the low note F♯ 2 :
<3H, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5>. This loop produces 92.59 Hz, fractionally higher than the note’s
equal-tempered frequency of 92.5 Hz.
In what follows, note-loops are sometimes written in an abbreviated form; for example,
<3H, 4×7> replaces <3H, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4>, and <3H, 4×4, 5×5> replaces <3H, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5,
5, 5>. Table 23.2 shows the full range of frequencies (down to 96.9 Hz) that the Mark II could
produce by means of note-loops containing four- or five-beat instructions.
The hoot-stop
As Turing explained in his tutorial, a fundamental use for <3H, 4> was the so-called ‘hoot-stop’.
If the two lines of code displayed in the tutorial were placed at the end of a routine (or ‘program’,
as we would say today), then once the routine finished running, the computer would sound C 5
continuously until the operator intervened. The intervention might take the form of pressing
the ‘KEC’ key at the control console—the ‘clear everything’ key—in order to clear out the com-
pleted routine, in preparation for running the next one.^40 Without the convenient hoot-stop
facility, the operator was obliged to remain at the console, watching the indicators, in order to
tell whether the routine had stopped running.
A very different solution to effectively the same problem was found in the case of BINAC, an
early US computer. Herman Lukoff, one of BINAC’s engineers, explained that the technician
whose job it was to monitor BINAC through the night, Jack Silver, had to spend all his time
‘looking at the flashing lights; it was the only way of knowing that the computer was working’.
One night Silver switched on a radio to alleviate the monotony:^41
To Jack’s surprise, all kinds of weird noises emanated from the loudspeaker, instead of soothing
music. He soon realized that the churning BINAC generated these noises because as soon as it
halted, the noises stopped. . . . He put the computer-generated tones to good use. Jack found
that by turning the volume up he was able to walk around the building and yet be immediately
aware of any computer stoppage.
BINAC, built in Philadelphia by Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, and their engineers at the
Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, was the stored-program successor to the pioneering
Eckert–Mauchly ENIAC (see Chapter 14). Eckert and Mauchly went on to build UNIVAC, one
of the earliest electronic digital computers to enter the marketplace.
The first systematic use of the Manchester Mark I’s programmable hooter seems to have been
to provide the hoot-stop facility.
when were the first notes played?
In a section of his Programmers’ Handbook devoted exclusively to the Mark I machine, Turing
made it clear that the programmable hooter pre-dated the Mark II machine.^42 /V was Mark
II notation; in the Mark I era it was the instruction K (11110) that caused the loudspeaker to