In the late 1960's I worked in an office of the Department of Health and Social Security in London. I remember being highly excited, together with others in the office, when we heard that we were getting a computer!!
A room the size of several large living rooms was "prepared". Special flooring was put down, and other preparations made to receive this hugh, sensitive monstrocity which took highly skilled people days if not weeks to install.
Apart from being allowed a peak, only a few specially trained people were allowed into the room to operate it, and only then, if they were wearing the correct footwear.
We all sat back to wait for our work load to diminish, as our job was done for us, by this daunting machine that cost in excess of a million pounds, even then!!.
However our joy was short lived it just didn't really cut the mustard. It often went wrong and or gave out incorrect information. Conclusions were formed that humans and their brains were best after all!! A friend of mine , and one of the very first computer technicians actually re trained as an optician because he felt there was no future in computers!!.
How wrong we all were!. As I look at my tiny mobile phone with, I suspect, the efficiency and capabilities far outweighing those first hugh computers, it is obvious what a long way we have come.
I wonder what happened to that vast apparatus. I have a sneaky feeling tit may have found it's way into Dr who's Tardis or one of James Bonds films ???