The Incredible Machine (1968) [video] | Hacker News Reader

The Incredible Machine (1968) [video]

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Despite picking up computers at a young age, that was in 1995, nearly 3 decades after this moment. It still blows my mind at what we've been able to do with the power to simulate and visualize everything around us. It's something I do think "modern society" takes for granted - that there's so much about the world that we JUST learned about, or at least finally had a way to translate theories into a format digestible to everyone.

I wonder how as we learn to design out large scale AI systems future generations will think about how obvious they are to them but were actually revolutionary to us. For example if the multi-LLM agent simulations we're seeing with Interactive Simulacra[1] will spark new theories about how we should communicate with each other.

[1] https://github.com/joonspk-research/generative_agents

This came out the same year as the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" and at the 10 minute mark in the video they have a program "singing" the same song as HAL 9000 in the movie, "Daisy Bell".

I wonder who inspired who, assuming it's not just a coincidence.

From Wikipedia: In 1961, an IBM 7094 at Bell Labs was programmed to sing "Daisy Bell" in the earliest demonstration of computer speech synthesis... Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke witnessed the IBM 704 demonstration during a trip to Bell Labs in 1962 and referred to it in the 1968 novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the HAL 9000 computer sings "Daisy Bell" during its gradual deactivation.[13]

The earliest demonstration of electronic speech synthesis was actually at the 1939 world’s fair. I think it was keyboard operated, though, and not driven by a computer.

This film is great because it not only illustrates the wonderful abilities of early computers but also emphasizes the humans who build them. Something I don’t see as a focal point nowadays

I seem to recall software having credits in the eighties and nineties

This having stopped is partly a side-effect of the “eternal beta” state of software.

“Thomas Knoll” is forever imprinted in my memory.

In part because programs back then were written by one or at most a handful of people that could be easily credited in the "About" box or equivalent. If you wanted a list of the authors of say Microsoft Excel or Adobe Illustrator today, the issue is that literally thousands of programmers contributed to them.

Related. Others?

The Incredible Machine (1968) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219180 - March 2016 (5 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36689982 (July 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7759856 (May 2014)

The real incredible thing is the "automatically generated subtitles". Try enabling them and watch the video again, Those need to be created by some AI, I guess.

The subtitles at 5:55[0] in the video are fantastic - AI subtitling random beeps and noises into words.

> the brutal purple from people broke rabin of remind bravo are all these they have hadn't usually mean happened

What is it trying to tell us? (:

[0]https://youtu.be/iwVu2BWLZqA?t=355

So many techniques shown in the video: graphics cursor, toolbar, menubar, click&drag, rubberband

re: early computer graphics check out john whitney (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIv-EcX9tUs)

They had to develop Figmas precursor in order to make that video.

Is it just me or do some of the people in this movie look like they haven't slept an in a while and are just trying to hold it together? They just kind of look like they're under a lot of pressure.

But it's a cool film. The rendition of Daisy Bell is what inspired HAL 9000 to sing the same song.

It's just you.

I'm guessing they're engineers trying to re-enact their jobs while trying to act naturally in front of a camera. This might be harder for people who didn't grow up with the presence of cameras (and the sense that they're always on display) like later generations.

I initially thought this was going to be about the awesome 90s game [0]. Was a bit puzzled by the date in brackets but I was wrong in my assumption.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbSMKGQ_rU

I also assumed it was about the game. It is seared into my youthful memories.

Casey's Contraptions is a mobile game highly inspired by The Incredible Machine

The greatest game ever created, surprised people don't talk about it more!!

Same. TIM's designer/coder Kevin Ryan actually made a spiritual successor called Contraption Maker, it's pretty fun and still has regular updates: https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/

Thanks! Purchased immediately. :D

I remember one of the sequels [0], it seemed to often devolve into blowing up vast amounts of airships and nitroglycerine, haha.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY_cKZo51b8

play it in your browser here:

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-incredible-machine-1m...

"The Mother of All Demos" by Douglas Engelbart and his team at SRI happened the same year. It was done live.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nm47PFALc8

It included:

- A pointing device (the first mouse)

- A GUI

- Hypertext

- Word processing

- Collaborative real-time editing of a document

- Video conferencing

- File sharing

The first mouse pointer is a bitmap of an arrow pointing straight upwards.

I started work and abandoned a small clone of this wonderful game a long time ago

https://github.com/nibrahim/Devious-machinations

Note that this is about a documentary about the human body from 1975 (according to Wikipedia), not the video game that was released in 1993.

(Though for me the game definitely also was the first association.)

This is not a documentary about the human body. It's about computers, Bell Labs.

Well, I stand corrected, thanks. Apparently there are too many things called 'The Incredible Machine'.

I just clicked on the video for a second and the first image it showed still seemed to fit the 'human body' topic, because at a glance it looked like some kind of ultrasonic scanner.

They made it say NOICE

They didn't want their computer to freeze, ergo no ice.

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