“How the computer can help the designer”, New Scientist, 1964

Interaction design for computer-aided design, 1964-style

Like most designers, I have bundles of old magazines littering the place up: ’50s Life; ’60s Punch; copies of the The Face, The Wire and iD from the early ’80s, some Emigres from the ’90s, etc and so on. Leafing through a copy of New Scientist from 1964, so old that the staples had corroded and vanished leaving only ferrous brown smears, I chanced upon the following article. (Ed. This piece originally published at cityofsound.com on 1st February 2006.)

Written by D. F. Walker of Ferranti Limited, “How the computer can help the designer” was surrounded by other pieces asking “What price cosmic conversation?” or taking us through “The cephalosporin story”, and further surrounded by the glorious period context of the adverts.

These give a sense of a British manufacturing industry still in full bloom, the sheer technical power of an empire still present at background trace levels, such as in the central London addresses for companies now long gone, an Ealing Comedy-like tone pervading the mental images. But between the lines, or…