Hugh Le Caine (May 27, 1914 – July 3, 1977) was a Canadian physicist, composer, and instrument builder. Le Caine was brought up in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) in northwestern Ontario. At a young age, he began making musical instruments. In youth, he started imagining "beautiful sounds". He attended high school in Port Arthur at Port Arthur Collegiate Institute (P.A.C.I.). After completing his master of science degree from Queen's University in 1939, Le Caine was awarded a National Research Council of Canada (NRC) fellowship to continue his work on atomic physics measuring devices at Queen's. He worked with the NRC in Ottawa from 1940 to 1974. During World War II, he assisted in the development of the first radar systems. On an NRC grant he studied nuclear physics from 1948 to 1952 in England. Le Caine wanted to devise new ways to produce those "beautiful sounds", so he established his own electronic music studio where he began to build new electronic instruments after World War II. Works At home, he pursued a lifelong interest in electronic music and sound generation. In 1937, Le Caine designed an electronic free reed organ, and in the mid-1940s, he built the Electronic Sackbut, now recognised to be one of the first synthesizers. After the success of public demonstrations of his instruments, he was permitted to move his musical activities to the NRC and to work on them full-time in 1954, where he gained funding in order to open ELMUS, the Canadian Electronic Music Laboratory. Over the next twenty years, he built over twenty-two different new instruments and helped Canadian universities establish their own studios in the new electronic music medium. One of Le Caine's most notable inventions was the Special Purpose Tape Recorder (later renamed the "Multi-track."). Experiments with his recorder led to the composition of Dripsody in 1955. The subtitle of the piece is "An Étude for Variable Speed Recorder"; Le Caine is acknowledging the musical past with his use of the word étude. French for "study", it allows an instrument to explore or study a specific technical difficulty. Between 1955 and his retirement from the NRC in 1973, Le Caine produced at least fifteen electroacoustic compositions in order to demonstrate the capabilities of his new devices. He also created a score of new devices and also presented his ideas and inventions to learned bodies and the general public. But while Le