This Is What It Looked Like To Have A Computer Delivered In 1957

    Computers were a bit bigger in those days.

    Hannah Jewell
    by Hannah Jewell

    BuzzFeed Staff

    This is a picture of Norwich City Council receiving its first computer in 1957.

    Norfolk Record Office / Via davidthompson.typepad.com

    It was an Elliot 405, and the first municipal computer in Britain.

    Electronic computers are already being put to a wide range of uses in industry. This week, however, they have entered a new sphere of usefulness. A local authority–Norwich City Council—has installed a computer, and is the first to do so....Local government work involves a large volume of repetitive processes. It is, therefore, obviously a field where the advantages of speed and accuracy inherent in electronic data processing will lead to substantial savings.

    The computer was soon put to work at processing the council's accounting, payroll, stock control, and more.

    This is what the Elliot 405 looked like in action, from a 1969 BBC documentary featuring the pupils of Forest Grammar School in Berkshire:

    View this video on YouTube
    youtube.com

    Their school computer was called "Nellie".

    As you can see, it was a complicated operation to turn the computer on in the first place.

    Vine
    View this vine on Vine
    bbc.co.uk / Via vine.co

    But once it was up and running, the Elliot 405 could be programmed to perform mathematical tasks, and to make the most beautiful music.

    Vine
    View this vine on Vine
    vine.co / Via bbc.co.uk

    Sort of.

    Oh, and this is what a 5MB hard drive looked like in 1956.

    retronaut.com

    This is a hard disk drive for IBM's 205 RAMAC "super" computer.

    Think about that the next time you've got a 32GB smartphone in your pocket.