By Nermeen Nabil Khear 
We don’t think of computers as something you’d find in the 17th century. But [Levi McClain] found plans for one in a book — books, actually — by [Athanasius Kirker] about music. The arca musarithmica, a machine to allow people with no experience to compose church music, might not fit our usual definition of a computer, but as [Levi] points out in the video below, there are a number of similarities to mechanical computers like slide rules.
Apparently, there are a few of these left in the world, but as you’d expect, they are quite rare. So [Levi] decided to take the plans from the book along with some information available publicly and build his own.
The computer is a box of wooden cards — tablets — with instructions written on them. Honestly, we don’t know enough about music theory to quite get the algorithm. [Kirker] himself had this to say in his book about the device:
Mechanical music-making is nothing more than a particular system invented by us whereby anyone, even the ἀμουσος [unmusical] may, through various applications of compositional instruments compose melodies according to a desired style. We shall briefly relate how this mechanical music-making is done and, lest we waste time with prefatory remarks, we shall begin with the construction of the Musarithmic Ark.
If you want to try it yourself, you won’t need to break out the woodworking tools. You can find a replica on the web, of course. Let us know if you set any Hackaday posts to music.
We know not everyone thinks something mechanical can be a computer, but we disagree. True, some are more obvious than others.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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