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

Original scans from Davidguy.brinkster.net

[#1 posted by zuzu , December 24, 2008 9:53 AM]

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.

[#2 posted by lecti , December 24, 2008 10:18 AM]

meat -> television -> human being

How prescient they were back then.

[#3 posted by dculberson , December 24, 2008 10:22 AM]

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

[#4 posted by pewma , December 24, 2008 10:27 AM]

puppy control unit?!?!

[#5 posted by Lilb792 , December 24, 2008 11:14 AM]

OLD SCHOOL

[#6 posted by hohum , December 24, 2008 11:34 AM]

This makes me want to Look Around Me.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , December 24, 2008 11:52 AM]

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

[#8 posted by Remy LeBeau , December 24, 2008 12:28 PM]

F%&cking hilarious

[#9 posted by Mindpowered , December 24, 2008 12:57 PM]

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

[#10 posted by dculberson , December 24, 2008 1:21 PM]

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.

[#11 posted by ridl , December 24, 2008 4:14 PM]

"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.

[#12 posted by dhalgren , December 24, 2008 7:45 PM]

I cannot tell you how totally awesome this is!

Totally awesome!

Made my Christmas Eve.

Speaking of which Merry Christmas all.

[#13 posted by Chas44 , December 24, 2008 8:08 PM]

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

[#14 posted by Joh , December 24, 2008 8:26 PM]

Was Wikipedia and Google around in 1978?

[#15 posted by kapusta , December 24, 2008 8:34 PM]

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

[#16 posted by Daemon , December 24, 2008 8:50 PM]

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.

[#17 posted by iburl , December 24, 2008 8:57 PM]

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

[#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.

[#19 posted by entropy , December 24, 2008 9:17 PM]

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

[#20 posted by Chris Griswold , December 24, 2008 9:42 PM]

"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."

[#21 posted by reflex , December 24, 2008 10:02 PM]

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

[#22 posted by bolderfiction , December 24, 2008 10:09 PM]

Thank you for this.

[#23 posted by Anonymous , December 24, 2008 10:28 PM]

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!

[#24 posted by Anonymous , December 24, 2008 11:55 PM]

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

[#25 posted by RangerGordon , December 25, 2008 12:12 AM]

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."

[#26 posted by dculberson , December 25, 2008 12:51 AM]

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.

[#27 posted by RangerGordon , December 25, 2008 12:57 AM]

(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).

[#28 posted by stygyan , December 25, 2008 1:31 AM]

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

[#29 posted by mouser2k , December 25, 2008 6:59 AM]

i'm rolling.

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

ahhhh, holiday memories (sniff).

[#30 posted by dhalgren , December 25, 2008 7:25 AM]

'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.

[#31 posted by ocarolina , December 25, 2008 11:51 AM]

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.

[#32 posted by ocarolina , December 25, 2008 1:51 PM]

sorry for the gobboly-guk

That Brass Eye link is: Paedogeddon

[#33 posted by chef , December 25, 2008 6:25 PM]

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.

[#34 posted by Navonodo , December 25, 2008 10:32 PM]

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.

[#35 posted by ulikaiser , December 26, 2008 1:01 AM]

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

[#36 posted by Anonymous , December 26, 2008 1:10 AM]

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.

[#37 posted by Anonymous , December 26, 2008 1:43 AM]

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).

[#38 posted by dr80085 , December 26, 2008 3:58 AM]

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.

[#39 posted by Merzmensch , December 26, 2008 5:12 AM]

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

[#40 posted by Anonymous , December 26, 2008 5:40 AM]

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.

[#41 posted by Rob Beschizza , December 26, 2008 7:30 AM]

Thanks to those who enjoyed it!

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

[#42 posted by usernamenumber , December 26, 2008 8:33 AM]

@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'.

[#43 posted by Anonymous , December 26, 2008 9:54 AM]

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

[#44 posted by gorfulator , December 26, 2008 12:26 PM]

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 ;)

[#45 posted by howaboutthisdangit , December 26, 2008 3:30 PM]

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

[#46 posted by dermoth , December 27, 2008 3:44 AM]

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

[#47 posted by freetardzero , December 27, 2008 6:31 PM]

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!

[#48 posted by Chan Lee Meng , December 28, 2008 7:16 AM]

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

[#49 posted by beergood , December 28, 2008 2:32 PM]

@#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.

[#50 posted by pAULbOWEN , December 29, 2008 7:11 AM]

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.

[#51 posted by Anonymous , December 31, 2008 6:57 AM]

" #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.

[#52 posted by Anonymous , January 4, 2009 12:51 AM]

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

[#53 posted by Anonymous , February 27, 2009 9:35 AM]

"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