 Welcome to the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Today we'll be talking about the electronic sac butt, one of the first known synthesizers and a trailblazer in the world of electronic music. Hugh McCain was the Canadian innovator behind this instrument. He began his career as a physicist developing radar systems at the National Research Council of Canada. Although a physicist by trade, his true passion was for electronic musical instrument design. From his home workshop between 1945 and 1948, McCain developed a groundbreaking instrument that he called the electronic sac butt. He named it, after the sac bout or sac butt, an archaic 15th century precursor to the modern trombone. McCain had no way of knowing it, but what he was actually building was one of the world's first analog synthesizers, two decades before the first commercial synthesizer was sold. Looking at the artifact, you can see how experimental it really was, but don't let its rough appearance deceive you. The electronic sac butt was a powerful electronic instrument with many of the same features and sounds we associate with modern synthesizers today. In 1954, the National Research Council of Canada saw such potential in McCain's design that they made him head of their new electronic music lab, the first in Canada, his job to work full-time developing new and unconventional electronic instruments for other researchers and artists to explore. Over the course of his career, McCain designed over 20 unique instruments and is considered one of the most important pioneers of electronic music in Canada. You can come and see the electronic sac butt and some of McCain's other electronic instruments on display in the sound-by-design exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.