Howard Dintzis and Renee Dintzis were both longtime faculty members in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry. The husband and wife scientists first met in graduate school at Harvard. Prior to coming to Hopkins, their work brought them to Yale University, Cambridge University, the California Institute of Technology, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this oral history, Howard and Renee Dintzis discuss their life's work as scientists and some of their notable colleagues and students, including Francis Crick. Renee Dintzis also discusses balancing motherhood with her scientific career and the experience of being a woman in a male-dominated field. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral histories series.

Dr. Cuthbert C. Hurd of IBM describes how the 701 computer can solve a complex physics problem as well as translate Russian to English in a fraction of the time a person could perform these tasks. On film from General Electric Labs in New York, Ted Baum explains the development, design features, operation, and uses of the mechanical arm.

This program discusses the scientific and business uses of computers, such as calculating 1950 census data for the U. S. Bureau of Census. It also shows the assembly of UNIVAC (universal automatic computer) at the Remington Rand plant. Dr. John W. Mauchly explains and demonstrates how a computer works, including creation of the magnetic tapes that give instruction to a computer. The program concludes that no, a computer cannot think.

Lynn Poole shows photos of a variety of computers from desk-size to house-size. Dr. Robert Rich, supervisor of the computer center at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab, explains the workings of an electromechanical punch card accounting system, which is an externally programmed device. He shows an oversized punch card and photos of keypunch, sorting, and accounting machines. He notes that this process has speed limitations, but internally programmed computers have both speed and versatility of input. Dr. Rich describes the operation of a model of a UNIVAC business computer, which he says resembles an IBM 700 or Datamatic 1000. Such a computer is most efficient in routine computations on large numbers of data for such purposes as banking, weather forecasting, inventory control, etc. Scientific applications, such as missile flight paths, require a human programmer to write complex sets of instructions for the computer.

The program opens with film clips of the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima. Dr. Donald Andrews, chemistry professor at Johns Hopkins University, says that man has learned how to harness and control the atom's energy in such projects as atomic submarines and power plants, but we can not yet harness or control hydrogen, the newest source of nuclear power. To do that, machines need to supplement man's brain, offering "automatic control" or cybernetics. Examples of this include analog machines that regulate single functions, like James Watts' fly ball governor to control steam to the engine (demonstrated in animated film), thermostats that work on a feedback loop, servoengines that correct the course of a ship, and automated pilots on planes. Dr. Andrews then demonstrates thermodynamics, which studies the relations between heat and motion, and shows visible and audible evidence of a gas using dry ice. He defines entropy as the degree of randomness in a situation expressed by probabilities. Claude Shannon was the first person to see the parallel between entropy and the theory of information, which makes possible more complex automatic control devices. Self-regulating machines still need human monitoring, but digital information machines, or computers, can handle more complex situations, such as reacting to emergencies. A filmed narrative describes IBM's Model 705 equipment and statistics. Dr. Andrews says that computers will become the instruments of overall control. Cartoons show the statistics, promises, and fears of mechanization in business, industry, and government, concluding that by 1965, the United States, with a population of 190,000,000 will require a 50% increase in production. Dr. Andrews also predicts that in the future automatic control machines will make possible automatically steered cars, continuous television with an on-request program selector for shows in full color and 3-D, interplanetary transportation within 100 years, and modification of conditions on other planets by robots for colonization of space. The program concludes with a brief film of the launching of an artificial earth satellite placed in orbit by a three-stage rocket as America's contribution to the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year.