TRIADEX Muse, Light show and Amplifier module.... from outer space _-_-_

YouTube via scienceforce

"Extremly rare Triadex Muse, Triadex Amplifier and Triadex Light show. A complete collection of a trio set from '72 still with the original boxes, manuals, cards and...the old warranty papers ;-) ALL is perfect working and lighting.
The Triadex Muse is the first digital musical instrument and was produced in 1972. It was designed by Edward Fredkin and Marvin Minsky, the creator of the alien "MONOLITH" in 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY, friend & collaborator of Stanley Kubrick.

Marvin Minsky has made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. In recent years he has worked chiefly on imparting to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning. His conception of human intellectual structure and function is presented in The Society of Mind (1987), which is also the title of the course he teaches at MIT.

The Triadex Muse it's an algorithmic music generator: it uses digital logic circuits to produce a sequence of notes based on the settings of various parameters. It has four small sliders that control Volume, Tempo, Pitch, and Fine Pitch. It is not known how many were made, but they are considered extremely rare.

For years, the Muse was a featured exhibit at the Museum of Science, Boston. The signage explained the device's algorithmic (and deterministic) approach to the creation of its seemingly-random music. Far from being random, its preset "song" played continuously -- and was even given a name, "Museum Musings," by the staff."

Update via Minsky in the comments:
"Thanks! Really nice article and explanations.

No, I didn't invent the Kubrick-Clarke monolith. I only made some suggestions about the appearance of some of the movie's intelligent hardware. (Early versions of the computer modules were rather fancy -- but we simplified them.)

- Marvin Minsky"

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A few more videos from others:

Triadex Muse - "A Muse Ment" by RL Music

YouTube via MrRLMUSIC

"We admit this video is kind of dry looking but its our first proper one and we actually wanted use the Muse in a new track we especially wrote for the video. We think the application of the instrument to music rather than a "product demo" is more interesting...well it is to us.

You will hear the random digital tones of the Muse in the track we call "A Muse Ment" adding a hunting ambient back-drop for a couple of sections in the sequence of music. We have yet to work out all the video functions for annotations etc but later projects will have these.
Hope you like it and the Muse is for sale by the way!

Cheers - Richard at RL Music"

The Triadex Muse with light show

YouTube via robotdrawer

"super rare vintage triadex muse sequencer with the lightshow box, circa 1970"

Triadex The Muse Synthesizer

YouTube via bac4calgravity.

"Vintage muse synthesizer"