Photos: Making beautiful music with the earliest computers

The bleeps and beeps of the world's earliest computers are being crafted into electronic riffs for a 21st century music concert.

The codebreaking computer used in World War II, the Colossus Mark II, and vintage machines ranging from the 1960s' Elliott 803 through to the 1980s' BBC Micro - will sing again as part of the Obsolete project, which is using early computers to make electronic music.

In March musician Matthew Applegate, aka Pixelh8, will fuse the simple sounds produced by early computer hardware into tonal tunes in two concerts at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, home of the World War II codebreakers.

Applegate, who has worked with former Blur frontman Damon Albarn, hopes Obsolete will put the spotlight on the UK's computing heritage and the tech treasures within The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley.

Here Applegate shows off the Elliott 803 and its myriad buttons.

Photo credit: John Robertson