The compiler was designed to encode music for the PDP-1 and built on an earlier program Samson wrote for the TX-0 computer.

Jack Dennis noticed and had mentioned to Samson that the sound on or off state of the TX-0's speaker could be enough to play music.

[2] For the PDP-1 which arrived at MIT in September 1961, Samson designed the Harmony Compiler which synthesizes four voices from input in a text-based notation.

Mistakes are greeted with a message from the typewriter's red ribbon, "To err is human, to forgive divine.

"[3] Samson joined the PDP-1 restoration project[4] at the Computer History Museum in 2004 to recreate the music player.