RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer

The RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer is not a synthesiser in the modern sense of the term, but an electronic composition machine. It was developed at the RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, by Harry F. Olson and Herbert F. Belar.

The design work was carried out between 1951 and 1952, although the instrument was not presented to the public until 1955. In 1957 a second model was built, expanded and improved upon the first.

Olson, born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 1902 and died in Princeton in 1982, is the name most closely associated with the project, the legacy of which is understood as an early milestone in the history of electronic music.