This extremely clever, stop-motion animated sales film narrated by John Salzer for TRW is aimed at large scale corporate clients for mainframe computers. The film depicts company co-founder Simon Ramo’s concept of ‘polymorphic computing’ and is based on a “doodle essay” that he made (think — 1960s pencil driven Power Point). The film anticipates innovations in the evolution of technology from parallel processing to peer to peer file sharing and cloud computing as well as the architecture of ARPANET and the architecture of the internet. The film was presented by TRW, an American corporation which was involved in several businesses including aerospace, automotive and credit reporting. Key figures of the company were Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge. The film is based on the animated work of Simon Ramo (:21). The animation shows how a computer must handle singular problems (1:44) and the need to process multiple problems simultaneously. Each parts of the computer work together and if one part fails; so does the whole system (1:56). A demonstration follows depicting how the individual parts are to be enticed to work operate freely while remaining in connection with one another (2:57). A diagram follows which is compared to the switchboard used by telephone companies (3:14). How a nationwide telephone system operates is shown as three grids are connected to one another (5:39). Private lines can be added and used separately (6:00). A small image appears showing Simon Ramo or Dean Wooldridge next to a large computer system (6:53). This film was produced by the TRW Information Staff (7:14).
A specialist in electronics for radar transmissions and fire control, Simon Ramo is best remember as the one person who first imagined the concept of “polymorphic” or distributed computing, later renamed “cloud computing”. Several decades later.Simon Ramo was awarded the National Medal of Science and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
