How It Works .... The Computer (Ladybird books, 1978)

zuzu

#1 – 9:53 AM December 24, 2008

We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they've been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work.

lecti

#2 – 10:18 AM December 24, 2008

meat -> television -> human being

How prescient they were back then.

dculberson

#3 – 10:22 AM December 24, 2008

I'm getting choked up over the lovely poem that computer wrote for its operator. *sniff*

pewma

#4 – 10:27 AM December 24, 2008

puppy control unit?!?!

Lilb792

#5 – 11:14 AM December 24, 2008

OLD SCHOOL

hohum

#6 – 11:34 AM December 24, 2008

This makes me want to Look Around Me.

Anonymous Anonymous

#7 – 11:52 AM December 24, 2008

Excellent. The Hal9000 Poem (If I could kill...) is weird.

Remy LeBeau

#8 – 12:28 PM December 24, 2008

F%&cking hilarious

Mindpowered

#9 – 12:57 PM December 24, 2008

I want a mini bar like the one they have there.

dculberson

#10 – 1:21 PM December 24, 2008

I'm also reminded of an awesome book I found on my dad's bookshelf, Man and the Computer. Here's the Amazon page on it:

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Computer-John-Kemeny/dp/0684130432

Here's a little discussion of some projections that Kemeny made in the book:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/comp/about/history/unplugged/crystalball.html

Pretty neat. He was a grad student or assistant to Einstein at one point. He was in on the ground floor of the computer revolution, back when a quadratic equation took a computer a week to solve. He didn't foresee the incredible speed increases that computers would make, but did predict a lot of the uses that an individual would find for them.

ridl

#11 – 4:14 PM December 24, 2008

"The latest computers from Japan can also perform magical operations."

This has the distinct smell of Haggis-on-Whey to it, methinks. We truly live in a World of Wonder.

dhalgren

#12 – 7:45 PM December 24, 2008

I cannot tell you how totally awesome this is!

Totally awesome!

Made my Christmas Eve.

Speaking of which Merry Christmas all.

Chas44

#13 – 8:08 PM December 24, 2008

I knew it! I just KNEW the Church of Scotland was involved.

Joh

#14 – 8:26 PM December 24, 2008

Was Wikipedia and Google around in 1978?

kapusta

#15 – 8:34 PM December 24, 2008

"...so long as the computer has been successfully prevented from dreaming."
right on bubba...i can dig where your comin' from

Daemon

#16 – 8:50 PM December 24, 2008

I love the mention of steam powered computers that don't work... and the coal-fired powered ones that apparently do - but don't use steam, as that doesn't work, you see.

iburl

#17 – 8:57 PM December 24, 2008

is this a modern forgery, an underhanded critique of steampunk and their computers that doesn't work?

entropy

#18 – 9:01 PM December 24, 2008

Umm, this is very funny but i think it is some sort of fake. the real copy of the book can be found here, http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/computer/ i read several pages and they do not match up at with what is printed here. Merry Christmas BB-gadgets, thanks for a great year of gadget blogging.

entropy

#19 – 9:17 PM December 24, 2008

Boy, i feel dumb, must learn to follow links before commenting.

Chris Griswold

#20 – 9:42 PM December 24, 2008

"Remember, however, that electricity is like magic: No-one really understands it, and it is very dangerous."

"You should do what scientists tell you to."

reflex

#21 – 10:02 PM December 24, 2008

I would so buy a printed copy of this book. "Only women may feed computers," indeed. And apparently then only from those with well manicured hands. Good thing I have a red computer

bolderfiction

#22 – 10:09 PM December 24, 2008

Thank you for this.

Anonymous Anonymous

#23 – 10:28 PM December 24, 2008

This was the *very* book (well, actually the earlier version of it around 1973) that was in our Math library ... and at 8 yrs old, it got me interested in computers. Computing has been very good to me as a career ... being paid for doing something you love! I have much to thank for this book. Cheers, Ladybird Books!

Anonymous Anonymous

#24 – 11:55 PM December 24, 2008

I really want to know more about that Scientology processor, what about the kittens?

RangerGordon

#25 – 12:12 AM December 25, 2008

I loved this. It seems in the same vein as the hilarious British television series Look Around You, which parodies late-'70s/early-'80s educational science videos, and is stylistically brilliant.

The voice-over narrator examines the most obvious facts in meticulous detail, punctuated with casual statements of bizarre misinformation.

Most units purport to cover broad science topics such as "sulpher," "maths" and "germs"--my favorite episode, however, is the unit on "ghosts."

dculberson

#26 – 12:51 AM December 25, 2008

Dammit Reflex, I just realized that I bought a blue computer and my wife bought a red one. How embarrassing; she's got the faster one.

RangerGordon

#27 – 12:57 AM December 25, 2008

(Addendum to #23 above)

On second thought, I've changed my mind. The unit on "ghosts" is great, but it's incongruous--probably a Halloween episode.

My favorite episode of Look Around You now is the pilot: the unit on "calcium" (and here is part 2).

stygyan

#28 – 1:31 AM December 25, 2008

In the sixth scan... why is it SCIENTOLOGY here? I don't get it!

mouser2k

#29 – 6:59 AM December 25, 2008

i'm rolling.

makes me think of the trash 80 i used in grad school.

ahhhh, holiday memories (sniff).

dhalgren

#30 – 7:25 AM December 25, 2008

'This is called a "clock cycle" and results in 1d6 experience being gained by the participants.'

HAHAHAHA omg I must have missed that the first time reading this.

CLASSIC!

Thanks again for posting this.

ocarolina

#31 – 11:51 AM December 25, 2008

Yes to #25!!

Nobody has done better than Look Around You when it comes to edu-film parody.

But Brass Eye has come close with their infamous [url=http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=UcnQDYnGtS8&feature=related]Paedogeddon[/url] special from 2001.

ocarolina

#32 – 1:51 PM December 25, 2008

sorry for the gobboly-guk

That Brass Eye link is: Paedogeddon

chef

#33 – 6:25 PM December 25, 2008

Wow - I never got to read this one; the only ones I got to see were How It Works... The Hovercraft, and How It Works... Farm Machinery. I remember reading that as a kid, and I was fascinated by the diagrams of the blower motors and intake ducts, and its explanation of how maintaining air pressure was important in order to keep the hovercraft high enough to be able to move over sea, land, and neighbors without being obstructed. The Farm Machinery one scared me though, mainly the section that showed how bumper cops were harvested, stored, then processed into sausage links. They did have a cool section on how cows are milked though.

Navonodo

#34 – 10:32 PM December 25, 2008

Pssst. I can assure you that a lot of the rather funny but suspicious text in those images is modern photo-trickery, likely achieved by misuse of a computer!

I know this because I own a pristine copy of this book. Even without edits it's quite funny.

ulikaiser

#35 – 1:01 AM December 26, 2008

Unbelievably good....could somebody please scan the whole book please...

Anonymous Anonymous

#36 – 1:10 AM December 26, 2008

I had to clean up the garage when my parents were moving out from the family home. I came across a pile of my old childhood books. Most were tatty and had to be binned. Others went to the charity shop but one of the books I kept was my How It Works, Microscopes and Telescopes from Ladybird.

Anonymous Anonymous

#37 – 1:43 AM December 26, 2008

This is obviously a fake book. Wikipedia and Google? (Seriously, I almost had myself believing that the book is real, till I got to Google).

dr80085

#38 – 3:58 AM December 26, 2008

hehehe. so good.

i'm sure i'd immediately call bs if the last page was the first one i read, but the steady increments in incredulity make it surprisingly plausible. sort of like a mental version of the "frogs don't jump out of boiling water if you slowly turn the temperature up" theme.

Merzmensch

#39 – 5:12 AM December 26, 2008

That's great! I like the cyberpunk lyrics on the monitor

Anonymous Anonymous

#40 – 5:40 AM December 26, 2008

I actually got a copy of this book as a kid (and actually still have it). The funny captions aren't in my copy and the text is a bit different too.

Rob Beschizza

#41 – 7:30 AM December 26, 2008

Thanks to those who enjoyed it!

To those that thought it was real: I want a bag of whatever you got for christmas.

usernamenumber

#42 – 8:33 AM December 26, 2008

@HoHum/#6: Exactly what I was thinking. Peter S. would be proud. =:)

Hey, BB editors! If you were to offer a hard copy of this for sale, I would totally buy it. Just sayin'.

Anonymous Anonymous

#43 – 9:54 AM December 26, 2008

Did wikipedia even exist in 1978?
If not then this is phoney and you're all being jerked around.

gorfulator

#44 – 12:26 PM December 26, 2008

I thought this was cold-war era subversive literature. An attempt to make our stupid kids more stupid!!

I did see an old puppy control unit on EBAY, you needed a new puppy of of course ;)

howaboutthisdangit

#45 – 3:30 PM December 26, 2008

This will go on my virtual shelf right next to the Ladybird Book of The Policeman.

dermoth

#46 – 3:44 AM December 27, 2008

Oh, bloody hell. I bought a 2nd hand copy of this for my brother a couple of Christmasses ago. If only I'd had the foresight to hang on to it, I could probably shift it on eBay for rent money today.

SOB

freetardzero

#47 – 6:31 PM December 27, 2008

I got almost as much entertainment out of the commentors who take themselves too seriously, as the book.

Seriously, folks- of course Wikipedia and Google existed in 1978! How else would they get into this amazing book? Unless one of those Japanese computers that can do magical functions was involved...

Hawesome!

Chan Lee Meng

#48 – 7:16 AM December 28, 2008

Ladybird Book of The Policeman:

http://seorant.ath.cx/police/ladybird.html

Previously covered here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/02/the-ladybird-book-of.html

beergood

#49 – 2:32 PM December 28, 2008

@#43

Thanks for the help.

I hate when incredibly obvious attempts at humor jerk me around.

Your keen detective work led you past the various truths such as 'only women can feed computers' and 'puppy controller' weren't able to hide the glaring fallacy that wikipedia existed in 1978.

pAULbOWEN

#50 – 7:11 AM December 29, 2008

By coincidence there was a letter aboiut this book (the original that is) in The Guardian recently. Apparently, when the Ministry of Defence first started rolling out computer access to its staff it could find no better general guide to computers. However, there was concern that senior civil servants wou;d be embarrassed to be seen learning from a children's book (Ladybird is exclusively a children's imprint) and so Ladybird was asked to do an edition with its own name much less prominent. They refused.

Anonymous Anonymous

#51 – 6:57 AM December 31, 2008

" #18 posted by entropy , December 24, 2008 9:01 PM

Umm, this is very funny but i think it is some sort of fake. the real copy of the book can be found here, http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/computer/ i read several pages and they do not match up at with what is printed here. Merry Christmas BB-gadgets, thanks for a great year of gadget blogging.
"

great job at avoiding comedy, dumbass.

Anonymous Anonymous

#52 – 12:51 AM January 4, 2009

Congrats to all of you who are questioning the legitimacy of this book. You all win the "Thanks, Captain Obvious! Award of 2009"

Anonymous Anonymous

#53 – 9:35 AM February 27, 2009

"If I could feel, I would feel love.
If I could touch, I would touch God
If I could see, I would see truth
If I could dream, I would dream
And if I could kill, you
would
be
first"
GLaDOS prototype, perhaps? XD

Anonymous Anonymous

#54 – 2:46 AM July 9, 2009

That's very funny! Definitely worthy of comparison to 'Look Around You' and other such mockumental spoofs.

Funnier by far, however, are the sheer number of 'wait, I think this is fake' posts. Darwin awards await you all...

...and I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw the poem and thought of GLaDOS!

williamsacott

#55 – 12:36 PM July 29, 2009

Most Ladybird books with dust-wrappers have a list of other books on the back inside flap. This list shows the other books that are to be found within that particular series.

If your books' title appears last on the list, or not at all, then this is strong indication that it could be a first edition bankruptcy. This is NOT to say that if your title is last on the list that you definately have a first edition - there are other issue points to consider!

An example of this exception is demonstrated with the image opposite - the title of this book is Smoke and Fluff - note that this title does not appear in the list and therefore could be presumed to be a first edition - BUT it's not! This is actually a fifth edition from 1947 as this is stated on the front flyleaf.