In the summer of 1967, inventor and physicist Hugh Le Caine addressed a group of students in Montreal on the topic of “Science in Music.” Le Caine was visiting the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, otherwise known as Expo 67. As a guest speaker, he presented on behalf of the National Research Council (NRC) where he worked, a government agency charged with research and development in science and technology.
Expo 67 was a hotbed for showcasing new developments in music, technology and their convergences. With a wisp of white hair, the 53-year-old Le Caine was showing his Serial Sound Structure Generator (SSSG), a new instrument he had been working on with the University of Toronto’s Gustav Ciamaga.
It was one of a kind, and perhaps most importantly, as an installation within the Jeunesse Musicales (Youth and Music) pavilion, it could be played by any one of the 50 million people who visited the Expo over the course of its six-month existence.
For many Canadians, this was their first exposure to electronic music and its possibilities, and thanks to Le Caine, the future was not just some abstract notion but rather something completely within reach.
Think of the SSSG like a kind of prototype for the later, simpler sequencers found in ’70s analogue synthesizers, and an essential component of electronic composition today. Up to six visitors could listen through headphones to the SSSG at the same time, while one person could operate the controls and shape the sounds the rest were hearing.
The instrument worked by storing two kinds of information: one set of values for which notes to play, and another for how long each note should last. As users adjusted the values to their liking, they formed looping patterns, so the machine could automatically generate repeating rhythms and melodies — a bit like a musical kaleidoscope. Users could also tweak the sound as it was playing back in real time, by changing tone, and applying filters and other sound effects on the fly.
Just before the exhibition, Le Caine added a tape player to the back of the machine. One side of the tape could create sound effects like echo or reverb, while the other side played a ready-made demo piece called “Music For Expo” that he had commissioned from his assistant David Rocheleau, so visitors could hear what it was capable of before diving in themselves.
The instrument proved to be incredibly popular, requiring a great deal of care and maintenance not because of faulty craftsmanship but from the sheer volume of use it received over the six months the fair took place.
As much as Le Caine’s technological innovations are significant, the importance of his legacy in this country and in the history of electronic music really stems from the ways in which he shared his instruments and ideas with the broader public.
“Le Caine worked for the National Research Council in Canada, and everything of Le Caine’s was published,” recalled Robert Moog, founder of the Moog synthesizer manufacturing company. “Le Caine had a profound influence on people like me.”
Le Caine was prolific in disseminating his findings through scientific and engineering trade publications. These articles that Le Caine published on his work with the NRC found their way to inventors like Moog, who then based his own inventions on those ideas.
As much as Le Caine fostered a growing community of electronic engineers and tinkerers, and was spending more time than ever developing new instruments for the university studios, he was feeling incredibly dissatisfied. The NRC held a diminished role in the government following the Royal Commission on Government Organization report, instituted by the Diefenbaker government, overseen by businessman J. Grant Glassco, and followed through with the incoming Pearson government.
The commission introduced a technocratic, managerial framework into federal governance that took aim at the NRC and its focus on basic research over applied science — effectively pushing for practical problem-solving and more immediate results.
Given that Le Caine had yet to develop an instrument for mass production in his time at the NRC, this shift put significant pressure on him to deliver. Over the next decade, this bureaucratic overreach led to serious restructuring and dismantling of the NRC’s coordinating and granting functions, transforming it from a central science authority into a mission-oriented laboratory and industrial research organization. Many cost-saving measures were introduced, including encouraging the electronic music lab to buy prefabricated parts for their prototypes over making their own.
But Le Caine’s creations have had a long legacy. Composer Barry Truax was one of the young people who got to use the SSSG, and he later cited visiting the exhibit as a formative experience on his own desire to make electronic music.
“[At Expo] I was exposed to an incredible amount of music and art from all around the world, and I also encountered my first synthesizer, because one of the pavilions there, the Jeunesse Musicales Pavilion had a synthesizer that I later realized was from the University of Toronto studio [designed by Hugh Le Caine]. I remember spending an afternoon there in May of 1967 playing around, trying to figure out this synthesizer.”
It was likely a foundational experience for many youths who witnessed it first-hand, because even as public awareness of such instruments was growing, access to such things was extremely limited to a small group of people. Le Caine’s desire to work alongside others, exchange information, demonstrate his instruments publicly, and see one of his inventions manufactured all came from a wish to extend that circle as widely as possible, making electronic music accessible to the average Canadian.
This article appeared in the 2026 Summer issue.
