Prophet-5
The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer manufactured by Sequential Circuits. It was designed by Dave Smith and John Bowen in 1977. It was the first polyphonic synthesizer with fully programmable memory. Before the Prophet-5, synthesizers required users to adjust controls to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound. Sequential used microprocessors to allow users to recall sounds instantly rather than having to recreate them manually. The Prophet-5 facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds". Initially, Smith and Bowen developed the Prophet-10, a synthesizer with ten voices of polyphony, meaning it could play up to ten notes simultaneously. Smith and Bowen removed half the electronics, reducing the voices to five and creating the Prophet-5. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer, which was widely used in the music industry. Whereas previous synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound, the Prophet-5 used microprocessors to store sounds in patch memory.