Randolph Herr wrote in 031220 MMDigest:

> Mozart died in 1791 and he wrote music for mechanical music clocks,
> while the Jacquard Loom appeared around 1800.

Mozart also wrote a program to generate simple dance tunes
algorithmically.  This has been ported to most modern computers and
is the oldest program I know.

The fact that Mozart had to generate random numbers by throwing dice
rather than using an algorithm does not affect the working of the
program.  I think he would have enjoyed playing pool over the Internet.

Regards
Don Cox

 [ See "Experiments in Musical Intelligence", by Dr. David Cope, at
 [ http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/  -- Robbie