When the US Internal Revenue Service began using computers in the early ’60s, there was national outrage: how could a machine be trusted to look after our finances? This 10-minute video, fresh from the archives, was an attempt to convince people that everything would be OK.
There was plenty of opinion to change, after all: some tax experts believed that the computers might erroneously charge people far more tax than they owed, or mistakenly send out hundreds of millions dollars in unwarranted refund cheques.
So this video, Right on the Button, tried to quell concerns, pointing out that computers could improves processing times, discover human errors, and generally improve the whole tax process (well, as much as you can). Given we’re now filing taxes online, it must have helped a little. Though perhaps US National Archives via Network World]