“Built into an office behind the rates counter, the machine consists of a series of tin cupboards, a battery of teleprinters, and a formidable control panel desk that seems to have come from a space-rocket launching site. “The cupboards which are the crux of the whole machine, contain the ‘memories’ – two of them ‘working memory’ which more or less controls the machine’s system of operation and a ‘bulk memory’ consisting of two mechanisms where the permanent data is stored on reels of ordinary cinema-type film.” In other words it was a touch complicated. We said the cost of £37,000 was, on the face of it, high but it would have paid for itself within five years in savings although no staff in the city treasurer’s office would be put out of work.