The Computer Man as a joke in the 1971 movie is a minor character played by popular actor Tim Brooke-Taylor. The Computer Man tries to propose business with some investors about selling his invented machine that uses probability to figure out world secrets by using 3 Wonka golden tickets as an example. He pushes buttons on the machine and response 1: "I will not tell; that would be...cheating." He nervously presses more buttons offering it a share of the contest prize but next response brings him and the investors frustrated; "What shall a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?" He frustratingly begins pressing more buttons and says "I will now tell the computer EXACTLY what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate!"
This minor scene is a reference to a part in the actual novel where the machine is shown to the crowd as a miracle machine with a claw that will sense gold inside candy bars and take whatever it senses with it by its claw to be opened and thus find the tickets...the machine is smashed by a furious mob because the claw grabs the golden tooth of a man and gruesomely rips it out thus making it again a failure to find Wonka's tickets.
Note: Although this takes place before the tour this was the last scene filmed for the movie shown because in the background were suitcases being packed to wrap up the filming.
Read more about this topic: Mr. Slugworth
Famous quotes containing the words computer and/or man:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
—Ralph Ellison (b. 1914)