A synthesizer the size of an entire room from the dawn of the age of computing lives at Columbia University’s Prentice Hall. Why has it been preserved all of these years and why was it even constructed, given the great expense and the fact that it had only one function. Music Librarian Nick Patterson shares the story behind the birth of electronic music and its connections to early computing here at Columbia.

Transcript:

Material Culture 

The intro music is “Brit Pop” by Scott Holmes.

Intro:

PODCAST INTRO:

RCA Mark II Synthesizer music

RCA Mark II Synthesizer

Kun:

Welcome to our podcast.

Rodrigo:

Hi, my name’s Rodrigo.

Kun:

I’m Kun. Do you hear that? Do you believe this song generated by a machine?

It’s a synthesizer, and we are very happy to invite Nick Patterson to talk about it.

Hi Nick, could you give us an overview of the synthesizer?

Nick:

The RCA Mark II Synthesizer which is currently still, although not working, housed up at Princeton upon 125th street, was installed there in Princeton in 1959, and you noticed it was Mark II, so there had been Mark I had been constructed not here by RCA labs, by the engineers: Harry Olsen and Herbert LR. The synthesizer, as you can see from this photo I brought here and probably can find others online, is a room-sized affair. It basically takes up an entire room plus some corners of a large classroom.

Rodrigo:

So Nick said that the machine was like thirty feet long, and we saw the picture that it took up a whole room like (most people are familiar with the pictures of computers) IBM computers, how big they were early in the 1950s, the synthesizer looked similar to that, it was huge bagel metal case. But I don’t know if it justifies. I mean th

It is a small book-sized manuscript, like one you would find on your shelf. On both ends, there are two wooden boards that are covered in leather. And you can kind of see along the edge of the spine where all of the different choirs or gatherings of pages have been kind of sewn to each other. The leather is fraying, but given it’s age it is in marvelous condition. This is a podcast about this manuscript, and the secrets hidden within.

Cover and then rear fly-leaf of the 15th Century Manuscript of Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta alongside the unidentified comic novella

A – Annarosa 

F – Fiorella 

N – Nicholas 

E – Emily Runde

[Material Podcast Opening Plays] 

[00:01:25 ]A(V.O.): Le quali cose, se con quel cuore che sogliono essere le donne vederete, ciascuna per sé e tutte insieme adunate, sono certa che li dilicati visi con lagrime bagnerete, le quali a me, che altro non cerco, di dolore perpetuo fieno cagione.

[00:01:43]F(V.O.): If you will consider these things both one by one and altogether and feel them with a woman’s heart, I am sure that your gentle faces will be bathed in tears, something which will cause endless grief to me who seek nothing else but tears.

[00:02:05] N(V.O.): That is an excerpt from the prologue to the novel The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta, a wonderful book by Giovani Bocaccio.There’s something magical about books. When I was young, I would spend hours in libraries and bookstores finding and reading anything I could get my hands on. However, there was nothing I loved and love more than old books. A certain smell, a certain history, a certain wonderful something. Old books are more than just a container for a story. They are a story themselves.If you’ll come along with me, I’d like to dive into the story of a very particular manuscript.

[00:02:51]E: So I have

Transcript:

[sound recording of the Elevator’s descent to the 100 level of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library].

Samuel Hyman: What you just listened to was the descent to Columbia University’s 100 level of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library. Located there is an exquisite Tibetan Buddhist Thangka painting. Hi. My name is Samuel Hyman. I’m a Columbia University student and welcome to Material Culture.

Material Culture Intro:

S: Before I start talking about this Thangka painting, I want to go over some background information. Tibet was first introduced to Buddhism in the 600s, coming from China and India. It wouldn’t be long before Buddhism became the prevailing religious and cultural norm in Tibet. Although Tibetan Buddhism had been developing locally for many, many centuries, it never left the region until the late 1950s when Tibetan Buddhists began traveling and spreading their teachings.

The school of Buddhism that was introduced to and remained in Tibet was, Vajrayana Buddhism. Based on the teachings of the eternal Shakyamuni Buddha, Vajrayana Buddhism uses a spectrum of practices and philosophies. Some of the more popular practices are sacred utterances or words called mantra, physical gestures called mudra, and disciplined meditation.

Before getting into the differentiating specif

Welcome to our new podcast, a production of Columbia Libraries’ Podcast Club.

TRANSCRIPT:

This is Material Culture. 

A podcast from Columbia University Libraries.

The Columbia University Libraries are home to more than books. 

We have 16 different Libraries at this University.

And there is so much cool stuff here guys. 

Rare books, artworks, drawings, archives. 

Objects from all over the world.

We asked our librarians and curators to share some of these objects from our collections. And we asked them: 

Who made them? 

Who owned them? 

Why are they important? 

Why should we care about this? 

We learned that every object has a story. 

Stories that made us think about how the world has changed, and how it hasn’t. 

About how objects connect us to other places and times and the people who lived there and then. 

This is a podcast about these objects and the stories that they tell. 

Subscribe to Material Culture to hear every new episode or visit our website at bit.ly/materialculturepodcast. That’s B-I-T dot L-Y slash Material Culture Podcast.