From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner
Newsgroups: net.movies
Title: Re: computers in the movies - (nf)
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.740
Posted: Tue Mar  1 02:33:28 1983
Received: Wed Mar  2 06:09:13 1983

#R:watmath:-463400:ucbesvax:6400003:000:1148
ucbesvax!turner    Mar  1 01:19:00 1983

	My favorite bit of hilarity along these lines is "The Forbin Project".
    This was filmed in part at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley
    when I was a teeny-hacker there.  (Teeny-hackers abound these days, but
    in 1972 we were rare as hen's teeth.)

	They had a fair amount of computer-allusive effects throughout the
    film (after all, who is the main character but Forbin's Project?) but
    I'll never forget playing with an IBM 1620 all afternoon one day,
    marveling at that machine's decrepitude, and then going to see this
    movie: only to discover that the world's most powerful computer is
    made up of old 1620 consoles!

	These wonderful hulks are SO SLOW that you can watch programs
    execute through the console lights, of which there are many.  It had
    A BCD arithmetic unit, which needed ADDITION tables (in ROM).  Australia
    still uses them for tax-returns, I think.

	So if you want to know where the flashing lights come from in
    the popular movie-image of computers, ask IBM.  They didn't abandon
    it as part of console design until the mid-seventies.

	Beep, Flash, Whir,
	    Michael Turner