Whence the projecting computer screen?

Cafe Society
1

You know what this is, even if you don’t immediately recognize it when you see it.

In Jurassic Park, when someone is sitting in front of a computer monitor, the contents of the screen are projected out onto the user’s face, in reverse. We saw this also in Armageddon, I believe (or it might have been The Rock). And a couple of decades ago, it showed up in WarGames, when Falken the computer scientist was standing up at the front of the command center watching Joshua trying to sort out the launch code, and the flashing mirror-numbers were flickering on Falken’s face and body.

Obviously, this is impossible. The monitor is not a lens. It doesn’t throw coherent light. But it’s become something of a visual cliche, because, well, it looks cool even though it makes no sense.

I’m posting this because I believe I’ve found the earliest use of this technique, predating WarGames by another decade: I watched Phase IV again last night. Amazingly cool movie with a hard-as-nails, unfluffy science-fiction edge, which is why my attention was caught by the brief moment of total unrealism when the milquetoast cryptologist is fiddling with a console-style oscilloscope or something similar is shown with the screen’s wavy line swirling across his profile. (Yeah, I know. A movie about superintelligent ants and I’m complaining about the implausibility of a projecting monitor. Whatever. :p)

Anyway, that’s from 1974. The movie was a box-office bomb, but has proved to have long cult legs and may have influenced later cinematographers. Are there any examples predating this pioneer? Or is this the origin? Or perhaps this trailblazer was completely forgotten until the technique was independently recreated at a later date?

2

Where in Jurassic Park is the scene you speak of? I don’t recall it offhand.

3

My completely wild-assed guess is that the original idea (wheresoever it originated) was for the screen to be visible as a reflection in the glasses of the person at the keyboard, and this somehow got mistranslated and mutated (either from one movie to another, or from screenplay to movie) into the version we know today.

4

Also happened in The Matrix - when Neo is asleep in his room and the search engine thingy is running.

I think it’s just one of those long-standing cliches (like text appearing on a computer screen accompanied by a sort of teletyping, pinging noise, or like the whole ‘Access Denied’ thing)

5

And what’s wrong with “access denied”? Oddly enough, one of the systems I support has “logon denied” when you goof the password and “Access DENIED!!!” when you’re locked out. Not only do you get the all caps and four exclamation points, but you also get the red stop sign.

Our Unix systems get the nod for obscure politeness - they say “Sorry” No “wrong password” or “you don’t have access to this server” - just Sorry.

The mainframe gives the impression laundry is being done and you’re short a sock - “password not matched”

But, that teletype-ish ticking. clicking. pinging while letters type onto the screen one by one is absurd. Also, all the other burbles, bleeps and bloops. The scene in “9 to 5” where the new secretary makes a disaster in the copier room has the Xerox machine making more funny noises than a kid’s video game.