In the 70s and 80s, some UK pop bands put computer programs on their vinyl records

[jAZ]

http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/000053.html

In the 70s and 80s, some UK pop bands put computer programs on their vinyl records

March 9 / Vinyl Data


One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD's, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That's right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70's and early 80's that contained computer programs as part of the audio. This is totally insane, and totally great.
Most of these programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum home computer series. The Sinclair Spectrum was a relatively cheap home computer system that used a television set as a monitor and loaded programs from tapes. It thrived in England in the early 80's:

"If the PC is the great electronic product of the 1990's, the Sinclair Spectrum was the great electronic product of the 1980's. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum (nicknamed the Speccy) was invented by Sir Clive Sinclair, a British Inventor. "

In the case of these programs on vinyl, the user would have to play back the proper portion of the record, record the resultant chatter to tape, and load the tape into the spectrum. Some users have mentioned playing certain games so much that they could recognise the loading sounds.


(more at link)

[TinyEvel]

I'm guessing one of them was Kraftwerk?

[Donger]

Originally Posted by TinyEvel

I'm guessing one of them was Kraftwerk?

Aaaaaaauuuuuuuttttttoooooobbbbbbbaaaaaaahhhhhnnnnnnn!

[Rain Man]

This is the coolest thing ever. It's like finding out that cavemen were writing books.

[RJ]

I would guess Thomas Dolby, for sure.

[Simplex3]

Information Society was the first band I heard of encoding information onto their albums. It was basically just a recording of a modem stream, so if you built a cable from the headphone jack of your stereo to the RJ11 on your modem and set your PC to receive, you'd get this:

http://www.insoc.org/Nav&Menu.HTML

At the time it was cool as s**t. Now I look back and think "man, that was gay."

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by Simplex3

Information Society was the first band I heard of encoding information onto their albums. It was basically just a recording of a modem stream, so if you built a cable from the headphone jack of your stereo to the RJ11 on your modem and set your PC to receive, you'd get this:

http://www.insoc.org/Nav&Menu.HTML

At the time it was cool as s**t. Now I look back and think "man, that was gay."

I actually dialed 011 or something like that and put my phone to the speaker. I don't recall exactly what happened, but I was connecting to somewhere. At the time, I thought that was pretty cool.