TOS Computers:

It looks like the computers on The Enterprise look similar to computers of the time period it was filmed. The displays, the controls, and the weird noise it makes. Does anybody know why it makes this noise? As the computer talks, She also makes a rattling noise similar to a very loud mechanical hard drive. Computers of the 1960s had memory that was also mechanical. I would assume that it would also be loud and that is why the Enterprise computer makes so much noise. Is this supposed to be Drum Memory? Is Drum Memory Noisy? Did it make loud "hard drive" noises even though it was memory? Does anybody remember old computers of the 1960s and compare them with the Enterprise from TOS?

 

They made the weird noises so the audience would know that there is a computer talking.Yes, it's the 60s.

And btw.: Of course I demand those weird noises on the new show too.

 

My computer make whrilling sounds when it's thinking harder than usual.

 

I know how Harry Mudd feels. My computer is constantly nagging at me.....

 

Mechanical noises were just part of the idea people had of computers at the time, because of machines like this:


When I was a kid I thought computers were tall cabinets with reel-to-reel tapes in them and a lot of blinking lights.

 

Just don't buy an M-5 computer. Dr. Daystrom has perfected it yet.

 

Actually it was perfected. Just make sure you don't use the memory patterns of a crazy person.

 

I actually used one of those back in the day! If memory serves, it was that same model.

 

I had a Vic 20, a Vic 64 and the original Apple computer back in the Stone Age.

 

I recall reading that punchcard programming was regarded as a menial clerical job at the time. I can't imagine how complicated that was, though!

Kor

 

The noise of the Star Trek TOS computer sounded more like a teletype machine. Lots of TV news programs back in the 1950s and '60s used the teletype sound as part of their theme or intro.

When I was a kid, that's what computers were!

 

Punchcards were just being replaced with disks when I graduated. I knew several students who were ready to enter their columns of punchcards into the computer when....oooops....they dropped them. Back to the drawing board.

 

The Gerry Anderson show UFO had some kind of teletype or printer in its main title sequence.

I'm not sure if the intention on TOS was to sound like a teletype printer, or possibly like relays, as would be heard in these computers from before the vacuum tube era. A 1960s TV audience generally wouldn't know the history of computing, but it just made sense to everyday people that a machine should have mechanical parts that make noise.

Incidentally, the clattering sound effect was made by manually banging away on an electric typewriter.

 

That was an IBM Selectric typewriter with the "golf ball" printing element instead of conventional typebars and a moving carriage.

 

That's why the one end had that little preprinted box on it. So you could number them.

 

Too late at the time for me to transition away from punchcsrds.