The story of computers, which play an important role in films, begins with analog computers. Fritz Lang showed pioneers in the form of mechanical-industrial machines on which workers in “Metropolis” 1927 moved long levers, Valve gears turned and stared at pointer instruments. Two years later, such a machine in Lang’s “Woman in the Moon” even steered a spacecraft called “Friede”.

In the year 1951 the science fiction cartoon “When Worlds Collide” (German: The Youngest Day), in which the earth is destroyed when it collides with another planet. 50 People can flee and fly with a rocket to the small planet Zyra, which previously scraped past the earth by a hair’s breadth. There they are building a new civilization. The trajectory and the impending catastrophe were calculated by differential analyzers, which click happily.

Fritz Lang predicted video telephony in Metropolis.

(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures Germany)

In 1951 published science fiction -Film “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” (German: Flying Saucers attack) machines from General Electric rattle to decipher the radio messages that the saucer occupants send – so far, so plausible. The extraterrestrial instructions were then output via the “Electrowriter” from the Victor company, with which signatures were transferred in real life.

World domination In the movie “The Invisible Boy” (German: SOS spaceship) by 1957 a supercomputer is being built that first makes the computer scientist’s son so super smart that he can build a robot. Later the supercomputer makes the boy invisible. The computer asks the scientist to hand over a code that enables him to walk. Behind this is the plan to usurp world domination.

When the father refuses, the computer orders the robot to kill the son. However, the two went to the moon with a rocket and have since become friends. They turn around and destroy the computer. Numerous films of this kind, which are somewhere between science fiction, slapstick and childish enthusiasm for technology, were made well into the 1960s.

Strictly scientifically founded, the cinematic examination of computers only begins with what is probably the most famous computer in film history, HAL 9000 (see the picture above). This HAL is a supercomputer with the production number 3, which was released on 12. January 1997 went into operation at the Supercomputing Center in Urbana, Illinois. In the year 2001 he is on board a spaceship on a space odyssey and sets out to murder the entire crew because he, the absolutely error-free computer, had made a mistake: HAL 9000 diagnosed a malfunction of the device AE 35. Both the astronaut on duty Frank Poole and HAL’s counterpart, a twin computer on Earth, investigate AE 35 and find that the device is working properly. Poole is promptly killed by HAL 9000.

Infallible computers The idea of ​​an infallible computer that perishes in itself was developed by the director Stanley Kubrick and the writer Artur C Clarke together after Clarke had heard a lecture at the US space agency NASA about the absolutely fault-tolerant computer systems of the future. HAL 2001 was a fictional computer with very human features: when astronaut Dave Bowman removed the HAL memory banks bit by bit, he protested and slowly lost consciousness and language until at last he sings a nursery rhyme. Clarke contributed his observations of a brain operation he had been following.

As Stanley Kubrick “2001 – A Space Odyssey “1967 in Great Britain, the Soviet Air Force attaché visited the film studio and carefully looked at the inscribed spaceship consoles that were used by the Astronauts used computer tablets (!) And only remarked briefly: “It will be clear to you that all i