'Daisy Bell - A Bicycle built for Two' - the First Digitally Recorded lyrics

danielsan · #1 10-03-2016, 10:37 AM

History

"Daisy Bell" was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892. As David Ewen writes in the book 'American Popular Songs.'

When Dacre, an English popular composer, first came to the United States, he brought with him a bicycle, for which he was charged import duty. His friend William Jerome, another songwriter, remarked lightly: "It's lucky you didn't bring a bicycle built for two, otherwise you'd have to pay double duty."

Dacre was so taken with the phrase "bicycle built for two" that he soon used it in a song. That song, Daisy Bell, first became successful in a London music hall, in a performance by Katie Lawrence. Tony Pastor was the first to sing it in the United States. Its success in America began when Jennie Lindsay brought down the house with it at the Atlantic Gardens on the Bowery early in 1892.

The song was originally recorded and released by Dan W. Quinn in 1893.

Technology & Culture

In 1961 an IBM 704 at Bell Labs was programmed to 'sing' "Daisy Bell" in the earliest demonstration of computer speech synthesis. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke witnessed the demonstration and referenced it in the 1968 novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the HAL 9000 computer sings "Daisy Bell" during its gradual deactivation.

It is also this very same connection which most likely owes its appearance in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, a drama about the life of the world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, whereupon the fictionalized Hawking types out part of the song's lyrics in order for having them subsequently "spoken" utilizing his iconic text-to-synthesized-speech device.

In 1974 auditory researchers used the melody of "Daisy Bell" for the first demonstration of "pure dichotic" (two-ear only) perception: they encoded the melody in a stereophonic signal in such a way that it could be perceived when listening with both ears but not with either ear alone.

In 1985 Christopher C. Capon created a Commodore 64 program named "Sing Song Serenade" which caused the Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive to emit the tune of "Daisy Bell" directly from its hardware by rapidly moving the read/write head.