Wendy Carlos, born Walter Carlos on November 14th, 1939 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was one of the pioneering voices of electronic music. When Carlos was a young child, she realized she was more comfortable in her female identity and found out about transgender issues later in life. This enabled her to further understand her feelings. In 1967, she started counseling with Harry Benjamin, a German sexologist and transgender advocate, and began hormone replacement treatments the following year.

Carlos moved to New York and graduated from Columbia University with a master’s in music composition in 1965. Here, she met Robert Moog and gave him advice on the development of his synthesizer module, leading to the invention of the Moog synthesizer. Carlos bought one of these herself and used it to create her own music, such as her groundbreaking 1968 album, Switched on Bach, which consisted of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on the Moog synthesizer. She was then asked to create the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980). In 1982, Disney contacted her to compose the soundtrack for Tron, further highlighting her recognizable electronic sound.