wargames2

Well, the production designer on WarGames, a fellow named Geoffrey Kirkland (who was not credited as Production Designer but as “Visual Consultant” because he came over from the U.K. and did not have a Art Directors’ Guild card), designed the WOPR [War Operations Plan Response] – John Badham invented the name), based on some pictures he had of early “tabulating” machines of the 40’s or 50’s, and metal furniture, consoles, and cabinets used particularly in the U.S. military in the 40’s and 50’s. They were adapted in drawings and concepts by Angelo Graham, the Art Director. The original name in the script was SIOP, which is written about correctly in your WarGames homage. Since Jeffrey was English, he may have been influenced by some designs he had seen there. I was some help, since my first programming job was on a General Electric 225 (I think that was the number), debugging an early payroll program (written in Fortran) for San Fernando Valley State College, now Cal State Northridge. We had an old IBM card sorter, etc., so I was somewhat familiar with the hardware, but like you, I don’t remember any of this hardware looking like WOPR. I do remember WOPR looking a lot like the very old metal furniture we had in the Army in the 60’s.