Bebe Barron ( – ) and Louis Barron ( – ) were two American pioneers in the field of electronic music. They are credited with writing the first electronic music for magnetic tape composed in the United States, and the first entirely electronic film score for the MGM movie Forbidden Planet (1956). Bebe Barron She was born as Charlotte May Wind in Minneapolis on June 16, 1925, the only child of Ruth and Frank Wind. She studied piano at the University of Minnesota and a post-graduate degree in political science. In Minneapolis, she studied composition with Roque Cordero. She moved to New York, and worked as a researcher for Time-Life and studied musical composition. She studied music with Wallingford Riegger and Henry Cowell. She married Louis in 1947. They lived in Greenwich Village. It was Louis who nicknamed her "Bebe". She died on April 20, 2008 in Los Angeles. Louis Barron He was born in Minneapolis on April 23, 1920. As a young man, Louis had an affinity for working with a soldering gun and electrical gear. He studied music at the University of Chicago. He died on 1 November 1989 in Los Angeles. Early works The couple married in 1947 and moved to New York City. Louis' cousin, who was an executive at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M), gave the newlyweds their first tape recorder as a wedding gift. It was early tape recorder technology that used magnetized plastic tape. Using their newly acquired equipment, the couple delved into the study of musique concrète. The first electronic music for magnetic tape composed in the United States was completed by Louis and Bebe in 1950 and was titled Heavenly Menagerie. Electronic music composition and production were one and the same, and were slow and laborious. Tape had to be physically cut and pasted together to edit finished sounds and compositions. Method The 1948 book Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, by mathematician Norbert Wiener from MIT played an important role in the development of the Barrons' composition. The science of cybernetics proposes that certain natural laws of behavior applied to both animals and more complex electronic machines. By following the equations presented in the book, Louis was able to build electronic circuits that he manipulated to generate sounds. Most of the tonalities were generated with a circuit called a ring modulator. The sounds