ALF Products

ALF Products Inc., or ALF (named after an assembly language instruction for "rotate the A register Left Four bits"), was a Colorado company primarily known for its computer-controlled music synthesizers and floppy disk supplies and duplicators.

In 1971 Tim Gill, a Wheat Ridge High School student with an interest in computers, visited the computer terminal room at Lakewood High School looking for "other intelligent life-forms". There he met Philip Tubb, a Lakewood High School student, who shared his interest in computers. This meeting inspired Philip to start the Jefferson County Computer Club. As a freshman, Philip had served as Student President, and he had good relationships with the school's and district's staff. He was able to create the only student-founded multi-school club in the district. Using log-on messages on the county's Hewlett-Packard 2000-series time-shared computer system, club meetings were announced county-wide and held at various high schools.

At the Jefferson County Computer Club, Philip Tubb met many other students who shared an interest in computers. He also shared a strong interest in electronics with John Ridges, a Wheat Ridge High School student. John designed and built one of the first computer-controlled music synthesizers, a polyphonic unit with 6 voices (each with an 8 octave range and 8 volume levels). It could be controlled by a remotely located computer when connected between a teletype (or similar device) and its modem. The ASCII serial data flowing on that connection was used to issue commands to the synthesizer. John also wrote programs in BASIC which allowed music to be entered in text format, saved on the computer's hard drive, and played back using the device. The synthesizer got the nickname "Mesmerelda" due to the hypnotic effects of its status LEDs during playback.

While a student at Lakewood High School, Philip Tubb was hired part-time to operate the district's computer. In that job, Philip also taught seminars on programming to many of the county's high school math teachers who, with little if any prior instruction, were struggling to teach the programming classes. With those contacts, Philip and John began demonstrating Mesmerelda to music classes at several high schools, introducing the students (and teachers) to this new concept of computer-controlled music. Many of the students were interested in music but not skilled enough to perform using a conventional instrument. These students were excited by the idea of using a computer to play music, eliminating the need to master an instrument first. The potential market for computer-controlled synthesizers was apparently larger than the two had assumed.

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