Tin whistle part of several folk traditions. Whistles are a prevalent starting instrument in English traditional music, Scottish traditional music and Irish traditional music, since they are often cheap (under US$10), relatively easy to start with (no tricky embouchure such as found with the flute), and the fingerings are nearly identical to those on the traditional six holed flute (Irish flute, baroque flute). The tin whistle is a good starting instrument to learn the uilleann pipes, which has similar finger technique, range of notes and repertoire. The tin whistle is the most popular instrument in Irish traditional music today. In recent years
Pennywhistle modem Pennywhistle modem The Pennywhistle was an early acoustic coupler modem originally designed and built by Lee Felsenstein in 1973, and later commercialized and offered for sale in 1976. It was one of the earliest modems available for hobbyist computer users. Like most acoustic coupler modems, the Pennywhistle was replaced by the Hayes Smartmodem and similar models from the early 1980s. As part of the effort that would lead to the Community Memory bulletin board system, Lee Felsenstein had found an Omnitech modem ("or something like that"). Designed to operate at rates as high as 300 bits per second (bit/s), the