Moog synthesizer collaborator Herbert Deutsch at IMAC

"One of the most radical shifts in music began in 1961 with a hobbyist magazine article on how to build a theremin and a jazz musician from Baldwin named Herbert Deutsch.

The theremin, an electronic device that generates sound using radio frequencies, had been around for a while, but Deutsch found the Electronics World article interesting enough to pick up the issue and follow the instructions. When he couldn't get his gizmo to work, he phoned the article's author, an engineer, who gladly mailed out an easy-to-assemble kit for $49.95.

Two years later, Deutsch spotted the engineer selling his kits at a music trade show upstate in Rochester, and the two fell into conversation. They discussed a relatively recent invention called the Mark II synthesizer, which made music by sucking up rolls of key-punched paper and etching the results with a lathe onto a shellac record. It was intriguing, but you couldn't exactly 'play' the thing like a piano or guitar, or even a theremin.

'Wouldn't it be exciting,' Deutsch told the engineer, if there were smaller synthesizers 'that a performer could own, or a composer could own? Something you could have in your home?'"

The engineer? Bob Moog of course. Title link takes you to the full article.