User Reviews

This was a fascinating episode with a fascinating premise: steal a valuable machine and hold it for ransom. In this case, the machine is a computer - a computer that cost $100,000 to build and will "revolutionize electronics" (and probably didn't have 1% of the capability of a $500 computer today). One crook asks the other "Why would they pay a ransom that is as much as the computer is worth?" The answer is that it would take them a year to build another computer and any business advantage of having a computer would be gone. So the crooks do steal the computer (a semitrailer is needed to transport it) and the Highway Patrol is after them. This show is also interesting in depicting what may have been a very early use of helicopters in following criminals. At the end of this episode, Crawford starts conveying his famous pithy words of advice or observation. In this one he ends with: "It isn't the car that kills, it's the driver." Hmmm.

Two thieves plan to steal and ransom a one hundred thousand dollar electronic brain - which is what computers were called back in the day. It is supposed to be transferred from where it was built to where it will be used, the thieves know this, and imitate truck drivers who are supposed to haul the thing. It is so heavy an 18 wheeler is required to move it. Remember the first silicon transistor was built by Bell Labs in 1954, and the first integrated circuit was built in 1958, so at the time such computers were a bunch of vacuum tubes and quite fragile. Today we all have computers much more powerful than what was stolen that cost several hundred dollars and fit in our back pockets.

The thieves reason that if successful they will wind up with the same amount of money that you get for ransoming a person without the complications or possibility of the long prison sentence that comes with kidnapping a person.

The thieves seem surprised that the Highway Patrol was using helicopters - one thief said it was something that he was not counting on. So I looked it up - Helicopters were not used by the California Highway Patrol until about 1960. This show doesn't specifically SAY they are in California, but from the landmarks and cities mentioned, that state is probably where the show is set.

So this episode turned out to be fascinating for the technical signposts. And it had a good script and acting as usual.