Oramics Machine - 7th June 2009

Last Saturday I chanced upon Rob Mullender's web page, which mentioned that Daphne Oram's original Oramics machine
was currently occupying a corner of his workshop. I hurriedly typed an excited e-mail asking if there were any restoration
plans in place, and was told that the machine had just been bought by the Science Museum, and that it was about to be
collected for storage on Wednesday. Rob very kindly invited me to come and take a closer look, and so the next day I
visited his workshop near Brixton.

This page contains photos of the machine in its current state. A detailed technical explanation can be found at:

www.daphneoram.org/oramarchive/oramics.

Nine or ten strips of clear 35mm film were passed across a horizontal bed, wound between two sets of sprockets:



Shapes painted or stuck onto the film allowed varying amounts of light to pass through into a series of light
detecting components, which in turn controlled different sound parameters (pitch, volume, timbre etc.)









Notice the acrylic strip to focus the light. A narrow slit allows the light to pass through underneath the film.





This cupboard houses the oscillators, and four wave shaping cathode ray tubes.



I presume the solenoids were to switch the oscillators on and off in a slightly crude way.

The red label says 'Beware - High voltage'. Another handwritten label says simply 'This one'.



A glass slide with various painted shapes could be positioned above each CRT.



The shapes would affect the sound in various ways. This is the part that I understand the least - I can't quite
grasp the exact sonic effect of drawing a picture of a dinosaur and holding it in front of an oscilloscope.



The blue broom handle has a mysterious but specific function within the system...





A very heavy duty home made tape recorder - who knows what fabulous sounds lie beneath the dust!





The Oramics machine in slightly better condition, about 50 years ago. I can't wait to see it fully restored.





Again, I am extremely grateful to Rob for taking the time to show me around this amazing piece of history.
I was very lucky to coincidentally see the Oramics machine just before it went into storage, and it was an
incredible experience to carefully hold the glass slides painted by Daphne Oram half a century ago.




(sketch drawn after the visit)


(back)