1968 - Miss Honeywell - James Wilson (American)

MISS HONEYWELL

Olympia, London. – Issue Date: 27/06/1968

At the Instruments, Electronics and Automatic Exhibition we see a futuristic 'robot girl' demonstrating various pieces of equipment by computer company Honeywell Controls Ltd.

A man takes the headless robot body from a cupboard and puts a circuit disc into her back. Putting the body back in the cupboard, he closes the doors and fits the head on, plugs a cable running from the robot's back into another cable, revolves a white glass dome over the robot's head and opens the cupboard doors. He then flicks switches at a control board and the robot starts to move, coming out of the cupboard and walking around this exhibition stand before a crowd of boffins and scientists. 'Miss Honeywell' – robot girl – is obviously someone in a robot suit, but commentator says "Honeywell's own spokesman says he himself doesn't know if this is electronic or mechanical or human flesh". 'She' apparently spoke like a dalek.

Miss Honeywell looks at a large flashing computerised consul board, then demonstrates several pieces of equipment on the stand. 'She' gets into the cupboard backwards (rather unconvincingly, I'm afraid). The man (could be Mark Wilson who brought the 'robot' over from Hollywood and used to be a conjurer) unplugs and beheads the robot, opening the cupboard doors to take out the body and remove the circuit disc from her back.

Note: good for illustrating the coming of the age of computers. There is a press release from Honeywell Controls on file, plus two news articles about Miss Honeywell, one suggesting that actor Jeremy Sebastian was the person inside the robot! She/he/it was obviously the hit of the show.