3: RAV 1

CLOUD BURST

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[STORY BIT - PART ONE]   [LEARNING BIT]   [STORY BIT - PART TWO]

1st tx

Tuesday 8th October 1974

Story Bit - Part One

Ram is showing the children how to work the computer. He indicates the data input unit (a slot) and puts in a program. He says that the computer is much faster at sums than humans, and challenges Tim to work out a sum that he taps into the computer: 12345 × 12345. As Tim sits down to puzzle it out, Ram tells Jenny to push a yellow button at the top of the computer keyboard. When she does so, the computer instantly displays the correct answer: 152,399,025.

Ram's computer is an elaborate set design full of miscellaneous flashing lights and an impressive main screen. At the time, any realistic design could be used because, outside of a few boffins in top universities, nobody knew what a computer actually looked like. The screen display could not have been genuinely achieved in 1974, and was really a set of pre-filmed animations being brightly back-projected - the same technique used for the screen in Richard Carpenter's writer's studio.

Mr Turner explains that the computer only knows what it's already been told. Ram types in "Who is Jenny Barber?" as an example, and when Jenny presses the yellow button this time, "no data" flashes on the screen. Then Mr Turner shows how the computer can store messages: He presses a red button above the keyboard and a message appears on screen "Don't forget to lock up when you go out." He turns the computer off by pressing the "power off" button, then back on again by pressing the (guess what?) "power on" button. Pressing the red message button again makes the computer display the message about locking up.



Mrs Green has finished for the day and leaves the laboratory, and Mr Turner goes after her with some letters that he wants her to post. Ram offers to mend Jenny's plane and invites the children to come back tomorrow, then he waves to them as they set off on their bikes. The man on the motorbike watches the children ride past from his shed and, as they cycle home, he rides along behind them on the other side of the river.





Learning Bit

"Things are hotting up," comments Richard, still wearing his word-watcher badge. Richard has built his own word-building computer and explains that pupils can do the same using a shoebox with a window cut in the front. He has cut a slot into the top and bottom of his shoebox as the input unit, and runs a strip of paper through the slots as a data strip. To finish it off, he's added an aerial, some control knobs and painted it silver. Wordy pops up and wants to know where the program is. Richard says that he's the program - he tells it what to do.
He gets the computer to make one word - 'him' - then changes the letters at the sides to alter the word to 'hill', then 'will'. By pulling the data strip in the middle, he can change the word into 'well.' Wordy thinks that's a "pretty good" computer, but he's got his own stuff to do.



Down in Wordyland, Wordy has a big heap of words to sort through, with help from Polly his pet parrot. Polly squawks when the word begins with a "p", and manages this job until we get to the word 'Pandit', because she's confused by the capital letter. Wordy puts together another tongue twister with his words:Polly Parrot put a pin in my pocketThen we get another crossword containing 'Read' and 'Ram', and a wonderful song about the "a" sound (it needs an "a" to understand Pandit).



Stop, wordwatchers! It's time for another song, this one about "s" and "t" (stop around and hear that sound, stop around and stand your ground). Wordy sticks his "s" and "t" together with glue and puts the resulting pair into some words - 'stand', 'still' and 'burst'.
Richard takes us back over the last bit of reading, and when we return to the story this time, Tim is narrating.





Story Bit - Part Two

The man on the motorbike suddenly charges past the children on a bridge and dives off across the countryside. When they get home, they mention their meeting with Ram and Mr Turner to their dad, but he is still busy working the lock gates and can't stop to talk. Jenny and Tim go in and start laying the table for dinner. They talk about the scientists that they met - Jenny thinks Ram is OK, but Tim wants to know more, especially about the room with the light.

Jenny and Tim comment that their mum is working the late shift, explaining why we never see her in the story. The real reason, of course, was that they couldn't afford to hire another actor but needed to exhibit good family values. Seven years later, Dark Towers happily got away with a family containing only a father and son.

Ravi's car is seen driving along public roads throughout the story, and therefore the registration number RAV 1 had to be legally registered to the BBC. The production team took out newspaper advertisements asking for the owner of 'RAV 1' to contact them. Luckily the owner of the registration DID write to the BBC, and Look and Read was able to officially place the plates on their rented black Mercedes.

The man on the motorbike is waiting by the side of the road when a big black car pulls up with the registration number RAV 1. The man takes one of the computer programs from Ram's laboratory out of his pocket and goes over to the car. As the window begins to open... could that be Ram Pandit inside?





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