Drum machines have been ubiquitous pulse generators of current musical creation since the 1980s at the latest. However, the small, inconspicuous boxes in which drum patterns can be programmed have received little scholarly attention until now. Here, for the first time, not only the interwoven technical and cultural histories of these machines are outlined, but the devices themselves are taken seriously as objects of knowledge. Their sound and their new techno-cultural temporalities, conceived via breakbeat and pattern labs of hip-hop, house and techno, allows the straightforwardness of historical narratives to become history itself. They are heard as agents of sonic futurity – aptly named by Kodwo Eshun’s term as ›futurhythmachines‹.