Christmas is coming and you may have heard the traditional Jingle Bells holiday song many times. But the version below probably shouldn't know: it is the reproduction of a rare execution, generated by one of the first computers in history, the Ferranti Mark I, in 1951. The "song" was broadcast on a BBC screening.

As you can see, it's pretty rudimentary, because it was the first time that an electronic machine - housed at Alan Turing's Computer Machine Laboratory - has performed melodies, creating sounds to emit them. At the time, three tracks were recorded by one of the engineers present, but the "interpretations" of Jingle Bells and Good King Wenceslas did not. And how is this record here then?

Alan Turing, right, watching Ferranti Mark I

Well, Jack Copeland, Turing's pioneering researcher, and composer Jason Long got a copy of the three surviving samples. By listening to this material and describing the event from the book "Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines", they were able to recreate what Ferranti Mark I played.

Duo had to “fabricate” several missing sections

The disk obtained by Copeland and Long totaled 152 computer-generated notes. By cutting audio pieces manually, the duo created a palette of various tempo and duration, which allowed the content to be rearranged to create new melodies. “It was like a musical LEGO: new and infinite structures could be produced from these basic building blocks, ” they report.

Jack Copeland, left, and Jason Long

However, the three reference songs were not enough to provide all the pieces of this puzzle. “The missing notes had to be manufactured by calculating a frequency near which Ferranti could generate. But it wasn't always possible to get the exact grade right. ”

Then it was necessary to shift the frequency of one of the samples from the palette to achieve something corresponding and natural, as some tests resembled one more machine gun. Another problem was the duration, and they then had to reduce or piece together. Well, one of the results you might already hear at the beginning of the text. And the other is here, the Good King Wencelas carol, straight from the time tunnel:

Rarity: Listen to the 1951 computer-played Jingle Bells Restoration via TecMundo