Composer Jon Appleton was an electro-acoustic music pioneer. Drawn to the possibilities presented by the emerging soundscape of electronic music, Appleton, along with Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones, developed the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer that offered on-board sampling and recording. Appleton was a significant educator, teaching on and off for more than four decades at Dartmouth College, where he established an electronic music studio, among the first of its kind.