the world pre-Doug pre-interactive computing

What we need to convey: How innovative Doug's work was: Before Doug, people could not interact with computers directly.

We need to show how alien the idea of a single person working on a computer, interactively. We need to set the scene for how revolutionary his work was.

Mood: The mood of the first sequence will be one of 'what? - it was that primitive back when he got his ideas?!"

Background: People could not interact with them directly at all.

Interviewee's: Bletchley people, Harold?

Visuals: Bletchley, Colossus, historical pictures/other footage from the era, showing the colossus in use.

Q:   How did people interact with the Colossus?
A (not Doug):   They didn't really. Reams of paper were hung up here. Then all sorts of things happened and the result was printed here. (Maybe we speed up the main section?)

Context:  X

: Before Doug started his research, people did not interact with computers directly.

Computers were rare, expensive and complicated.

When he was growing up, there was no computer at all on the Eastern seaboard.

Computers were basically big calculating machines

(as were the people they were named after; 'computers', people who compute).

There was no such thing as personal computing.

Early electronic computers first appeared during the second world war.

These computers were lumbering beasts; expensive and slow.

At Bletchley Park, outside London, the world first computer was built to help codebreakers during world war 2.

It was tickertape in. Let it run. And printed output.

Once a program was laboriously entered, you could not change it until it had run its course.