Police computer
In one scene a a policeman uses a computer called a "ramdomator" or something to produce the police card of one of the gang. Were actual machines like this used by the police in the early 1970's?
shareYes, but to make it work you had to connect it to the "mother" which consisted of 7 reel to reels, 15 data banks with a 24 slot tray with 12,850 punch cards that sorted out in a room 23 foot long. The batterry for it was the size of a refrigerator, it cost 3.7 million dollars and it took the Police Department 13 months to program it, they then used it for 6 months before it became obsolete.
Seriously I don't know, I took a wild guess.
As someone whos been in the computer biz for over 30 years it looked more like a
punch card sorter an offline device.
a punch card sorter was not a computer like device?
I didn't say it was I said it looked like a card sorter.
Point in fact computers back in the 1960s to about the 1980s used punch cards to read in pgms AND data.
I ran such systems for over 30 yrs
Banks and brokerage houses had account's data on millions of punch cards.
When a proxy or dividend checks had to go out operators would spend as many as two or three days or more reading in cards 24 hrs a day.
Not the most fun job. I've done such a task.
I think that particular terminal was running on Windows '68 hence the crudity of the green lettering. The newer Windows '71 was a bit smoother and the green lettering was variable in brightness and 2 extra fonts were added. There was also a screensaver- the monitor's 'off' button. Seriously, I remember using a green-screen IBM terminal at college in the late 80s and am quite impressed that a computer in a film from 1971 had a very similar look about it.
shareWasn't it a guy at IBM that said "A mouse? No one in a office will ever use something called a mouse."
sharespeaking of mouse here is a story I saw in a thread for another film (credit to a_moore)
A woman called a computer support line (back when there was such a thing) complaining that she couldn't get her computer to turn on. The representative was very patient and helpful, and asked the woman the standard questions: Is it plugged in? Yes. Are all the cords and cables connected? Yes.
After going through the checklist, the rep was stumped, until the woman mentioned that the foot pedal didn't seem to be working.
"The...foot pedal?"
"Yes, I've been stepping on the foot pedal, but it doesn't seem to be working."
"Ma'am, computers don't have foot pedals. What does it look like?"
The woman described the object that she had placed on the floor and was furiously smashing with her foot. Finally, the rep figured it out.
"Ma'am, that's the computer mouse."
Women and their sewing machines. LOL.
foot pedal! hilarious, psdhart, thanks.
share""Yes, but to make it work you had to connect it to the "mother" which consisted of 7 reel to reels, 15 data banks with a 24 slot tray with 12,850 punch cards that sorted out in a room 23 foot long. The batterry for it was the size of a refrigerator, it cost 3.7 million dollars and it took the Police Department 13 months to program it, they then used it for 6 months before it became obsolete. ""
good sir, If I could give you 100 internet monies, I would.