https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731671-300-old-scientist-the-rise-of-the-machines-from-railway-timetables/

THE computer age dawned before this magazine launched, but New Scientist has been around for long enough to capture the machines’ ever-accelerating evolution and their infiltration of our daily lives.

Back in 1963 they were big and slow, but already replacing humans at mundane tasks. We reported that February that British Railways was using a Ferranti Pegasus 2 to compile its Eastern Region timetable, and that the Eastern Region had to rearrange its headquarters to fit the beast in. We recognised the start of an inexorable process of speeding up tasks while cutting the need …