Introduction to Computers
An eye-opening and entertaining lesson from the dawn of the computer age
This educational video probably won't win any awards for slick presentation, and its educational value is more than half a century past its sell-by date. But surprisingly, perhaps, it makes fascinating viewing today: as a pioneering example of technology-enabled remote learning in higher education and as a record from the dawn of the IT age, not to mention an entertaining, sometimes comic artefact of a very different time.
The first part of an Introduction to Computers course made by the University of London Television Centre and disseminated to students on video, it's essentially a recorded lecture supported by some pretty basic visual aids and a few short video inserts, produced in a style that might feel familiar to anyone who's ever watched an Open University broadcast from the 1970s or 80s.
With his sensible cropped haircut, sharp glasses, skinny tie and earnest stiffness, presenter Dr Robert Day bears a more than passing resemblance to Talking Heads' David Byrne (circa Once in a Lifetime). But he makes a fluent guide to what must have seemed a bewilderingly alien world to many of his unseen students - and probably will to many watching today. These computers are not desktop-sized, but vast cabinets, storing their data on cumbersome magnetic reels or discs.
Though it's billed as an introduction to the programming language Fortran, this opening class doesn't get further than an explanation of some basic computational concepts. Much of the video is given up to a helpful, thorough (if perhaps slightly laboured) explanation of binary for beginners, which uses a car milometer to convey the challenge of rendering negative integers and decimal fractions in strings of 1s and 0s.
21st-century coders can count themselves lucky they don't have to put up with such headaches - or to compete for a slot to program a solitary shared computer with punchcards...
University of London instructional film aimed at students about the basics of computer programming.
Tags
That Was the Future
Their future, our now: explore how earlier generations imagined the world we're living in today.
For anyone living in the later years of the 20th century, it felt like the future was arriving unusually fast. As computers, once huge behemoths that filled rooms, began to shrink to desktop size, they quickly spread into every arena of society, spreading out from university labs and industry giants to ordinary offices, schools and into the home. Meanwhile astonishing advances in robotics, genetics, materials, transport and entertainment all offered glimpses of a brave new world. Just trying to keep up with this revolution was dizzying, never mind making sense of it.
What did it all mean? What did the future hold - for our work, our leisure, our health, our food, our relationships? How would technology change us as people? Would it be the kind of future we'd want? Nobody could say for sure, but there were plenty of people willing to speculate. And now that their future is our present, it's fascinating to look back and judge for ourselves how right - or how wrong - they were.
19 videos in this collection
1
2
IT82: The Office
3
IT82: The Home
4
Prostheses
5
Smart Living @ Home with Technology
6
Sinclair C5 Cycle / Car Launched
7
Mobile Phones: Text
8
Appeal For Computer Game Programmers
9
Digital World
10
Scientists Growing Skin Artificially
11
Talk Teletext
12
Introduction to Computers
13
Modernising the Underground
14
Photon Connection
15
Mensa Symposium Predicts Future
16
Computers for Share Dealing
17
Ford Working On Tomorrow's Car
18
Police Try Out Their New Hoolivan
19