BERLIN (AP) — Oskar Sala, the German composer and physicist whose novel
musical instrument produced the sound effects for Alfred Hitchcock’s The
Birds, died Tuesday. He was 91. Sala developed and mastered the trautonium,
billed as the world's first electronic musical instrument when it was
invented in 1929. The trautonium was most famously employed to produce the
bird calls in Hitch|cock’s 1963 film.
