By the early ’60s, Byrne explains, companies had grown to depend on enormous IBM mainframe computers, and they were forced to install a new mainframe at each and every one of their branch offices. AT&T aimed to replace all those duplicate machines with a system that would allow a single mainframe to communicate with several remote locations via high-speed data connections. Ma Bell already had a near monopoly on voice communications, and this was its next conquest.

The rub was that many people feared a robopocalypse — a dystopian world where machines made man obsolete. Ma Bell also needed to reassure people that its machine-to-machine communication wouldn’t take over the planet. And what better way to ease their fears than Computer H14?

[…]

Luckily, H14 diagnoses the problem — a lapse in data communications and a missing circuit — and he provides a set of “flawless” recommendations that result in increased productivity, improved performance, and gobs of extra time for Charlie Magnetico — played by Juhl — to think all sorts of big thoughts. In short, AT&T’s machine-to-machine communications save the day.

But in the end, this film conveys much the same message as the one that came before it: Machines can make life easier, but not without the help of humans. H14′s recommendations are flawless only until one of those missiles nearly lands on his head.

Ref: Tech Time Warp of the Week: Jim Henson’s Muppet Computer, 1963 – Wired