Entertainment
For fun, bored programmers would create programs to display animated light shows. Front panels in the late 1960s and early 1970s were quite brightly colored. When bootstrap ROMs enabled computers to start themselves without operator intervention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, most computers were built without a front switch panel. High-powered calculators, such as the HP 9830 based on ROM, were among the first computers to do away with front panels, and operators.
Huge banks of "blinkenlights" and "blowenfuzen" were featured on TV and movies as the popular image of the "computer" during the 1950s to 1970. (A Burroughs B205 was used as a Hollywood prop for many of these shows.)
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