The Invisible Boy (1957): "Look at the Pretty Lights, Timmy..."

Here are four images of the supercomputer (which is never given a name). Notice in the picture below to the left, what looks like an eye has been drawn onto the computer's dome-shaped "head." This dome-shape, though larger, is quite similar to Robby the Robot's head (see below.) That's Doctor Tom Mereneau standing in front of his computer in the shot below. The framing throughout the film draws a close association between Mereneau and his creation, an association that his wife makes explicit in an early scene. She tells him "You're getting more and more like a computer yourself." In the shot shown below, Mereneau is feeding the computer information about his son, Timmy, hoping that the computer can help him in his struggle to motivate Timmy's intellectual development.

The computer's modus operandi for controlling humans is surprisingly low-tech: hypnosis. The banks of flashing lights that flank the computer's dome-head have an astounding effect on anyone sitting in the console. All the computer has to do is say "Look at lights...look at the lights..." and the person falls under technology's seductive spell.

Throughout the film, Tom Mereneau's skills as a parent and father are a source of great concern and the subject of explicit critique. He's a workaholic, spending more time with the computer than his son, who apparently considers his father little more than an ogre who gripes about table manners and tries to make him learn how to add fractions. The film draws clear lines between the worlds of technology and domesticity. When Mereneau explains to his Timmy the basic concept of a computer, the only response his wife can come up with is "How disgusting!" and when Timmy brings Robby the Robot home with him (below left) his mother inexplicably mistakes the robot for a door-to-door salesman! At the end of the film, however, when Mereneau attempts to spank little Timmy for disobedience, Robby intervenes and won't allow it. Mereneau shrugs his shoulders, grins, releases Timmy, and Robby is fully integrated into the family (below right).