Twenty-four high-resolution scans and photographs from the archive at Freshwater Instruments — the Series III brochure and specification sheet, internal office material from the Fairlight years, and a schematic from 1975 for the machine the Fairlight grew out of. Free, straight to your inbox.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Everything written about this instrument comes from the same handful of interviews, repeated for forty years until the details wear smooth. What almost nobody has seen is what the company actually printed, drew and faxed while the thing was being built.
A small example. In our interview, Cris says a Series III could take thirty-two megabytes. The specification sheet in this folder says fourteen. Both are now in front of you, and you can decide what you think — which is the entire reason for publishing documents instead of summarising them.
WHAT'S INSIDE
The Series III brochure, cover to centrefold, and the specification sheet: twelve microprocessors, fourteen megabytes of waveform RAM, and a footnote promising CAPS in the second half of 1986. Plus user profiles from studios in Paris and Denmark.
The mainframe with its lid off. The card cage, where every board is its own computer. The monitor with the light pen still sitting in its holster. Spare boards in a wooden rack, and the CMI-30A anniversary edition.
A 1975 QASAR schematic. A fax signed by the entire Los Angeles office. A cartoon drawn by somebody who had waited long enough for CAPS. The things that never make it into a history, because nobody thought to keep them.
The Fairlight monitor, light pen still in its holster.
WHERE THIS CAME FROM
The series starts in Los Angeles, where Cris Blyth opened up his collection of Fairlights for the interview. Everything in this folder comes from somewhere else — the archive at Freshwater Instruments, who dug it out and let us publish it.
Claudio
