A Short History of Computers in the Movies

Esther Schindler writes: The big screen has always tried to keep step with technology usually unsuccessfully. Peter Salus looks at how the film industry has treated computing.

For a long time, the "product placement" of big iron was limited to a few brands, primarily Burroughs. For instance:

Batman: The Movie and Fantastic Voyage (both 1966) revert to the archaic Burroughs B205, though Fantastic Voyage also shows an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central. At 250 tons for each installation (there were about two dozen) the AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer ever built, with 60,000 vacuum tubes and a requirement of 3 megawatts of power to perform 75,000 ips for regional radar centers. The last IBM AN/FSQ-7, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, was demolished in February 1984.

Fun reading, I think.