TURNS OUT IT WAS A REAL COMPUTER

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A month ago I posted about these black panels seen in The Ambassadors of Death. They also appear in sixties sci-fi show Object Z and the film Spaceflight IC-1. But other than I didn’t know anything about it. 

Well it turns out it’s part of a real computer. It’s the control panel from an ICT 1201 dating from the 1950s. Incidentally the other occasion I inadvertently covered a real computer was the ICT 1301, part of the same lineage of machines from International Computers and Tabulators. As always with this niche tech stuff I am indebted to the excellent blog Starring the Computer who identified the other appearances of this panel shown in this post.

ICT 1201
THE AVENGERS, 1964 

From the season 3 episode The Wringer

OUT OF THE UNKNOWN, 1965

From the first season of the BBC anthology series. The episode is The Counterfeit Man.

OUT OF THE UNKNOWN, 1965

And later in that first season in an episode called Sucker Bait.
HELP, 1965

And finally one pops up in The Beatles flick help where it doubles as a recording desk.























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