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IBM in the UK 1971 video, with excellent Barry Whiteesque soundtrack

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About 25 years ago I went on a school trip to IBM with my classmates.  We got to see the exciting world of computers up close and personal, fancy graphics and most importantly free biscuits and orange juice.  To introduce us to IBM in Britain and what they do IBM showed us a movie, the movie was made in 1971 but IBM was still using it, anyway, we sat down like typical teenagers and quietly enjoyed the fashions and music of the early 70s in a corporate movie.  Then at some point in the movie, my jaw dropped and I let out a "what the?" as my best mate screamed out to everyone else "That's Tyler's Dad!".  I had no idea this was coming and I didn't even know my Dad was made famous by an IBM 70s movie (I was about 1 1/2 when it was filmed).  

When I moved down to IBM Hursley from IBM Brentford, I took it upon myself to go to the media lab to try get a hold of this tape, what a great surprise it would be for my Dad (and the rest of the family) to take it home one weekend for all to see, as they had not suffered the embarrassment or emotional scaring I had in my teenage years.   I managed to get hold of the tape, and I had it copied from UMATIC to VHS.  Sadly that copy was made almost 20 years ago and it's showing it's age, it's missing the end now, but if you're up for the challenge and can put up with a few tracking  messages  you will get to see a few amazing things like, hand made memory boards, early Visio (blackboard), stunning computer graphics, What looks like the insides of a 2.5 inch hard drive (3 min 28 second mark), but taken from the set of land of the giants! Also some great marketing writing with gems like "IBM applied a systems approach to the mechanical handling of words"

 Some stunning things, oh and just for the fun of it, you can see if you can identify my Dad, feel free to post your guess on where he first appears.


IBM in the UK - 1971 from Carl Tyler on Vimeo.


If anybody inside IBM can get hold of a good copy that would be fantastic.

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - HA HA HA! i can imagine you sat there like no no please don't say it no don't say its my dad. :)

Gravatar Image2 - Your father is the one that took out the 8 inch floppy after opening the blue cabinet.

Gravatar Image3 - @2 That's the guy.

Gravatar Image4 - he looks really shifty when he's sat in the meeting. Adam thinks someones behind him is moving his eyes. He should be a character in Captain Scarlett.Emoticon

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