The 1962 Marathon International Productions film “The Right Hand of Plenty” shows the future of computer involvement in the development, manufacture, and maintenance of the automobile. Featuring a swinging jazz score (the film had it’s own soundtrack titled “”Music to Make Automobiles By”), the film opens with a segment on the punch-card auto dial telephone of the future with a similar method utilized by airline ticket agents. At mark 02:20 we’re taken inside a Volkswagen assembly plant and the narrator explains how some of the monotony and physical stress of repeated movements can be alleviated by technology. Machines are already in use for such tasks as creating a payroll (mark 03:30) or ordering supplies, so an apparatus can be used in creating an automobile faster and more economically. At mark 04:40 we see some of those machines at work, taking over with “inexhaustible accuracy” jobs workers had performed. Describing the movement as a choreography of robot ballets, the film shows machines drilling and cutting their way through the car-making process. Engine blocks make their way down an assembly line at mark 08:20 where the machine’s work undergoes human inspection for accuracy. “Once man was just a clever beast of burden,” says the narrator at mark 11:00. “He has now given his old task to the machine so that he may be human.” The film rolls on as machines perform mundane tasks and humans check their accuracy, and at mark 15:17 we’re told how devices have actually created jobs for engineers, salesman, managers, and in several other areas. “Man’s great desire is the chance to use his mind … to make everything better,” it’s said at mark 18:18. “Here, every man is encouraged. Every day brings change.”

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