The School Computer

More from the BBC Archives, this time a clip from Tomorrow's World broadcast in 1969 that showcases an early school computer. It opens with an extraordinarily laborious boot-up routine that needs a whole crew of schoolboys to operate - reminiscent (and perhaps modelled upon) the bridge scenes in Star Trek.

It's also worth noting that despite the patrician froth - RP accents, posh schoolboys, technocratic elitism etc - the programme lays forth the workings of the school computer with incredible detail and rigour, detail and rigour that would be unheard of today even in a self-consciously "clever" BBC4 documentary.