The MUTHUR 600 computer is at the very heart of the Nostromo ship. We are first introduced to it near the beginning of the movie as Captain Dallas is alerted that there is a distress signal that had rerouted the ship to intercept.

The set for the mother atrium is a thing of beauty as you see flickering lights evenly spaced across every inch of the interior.

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In the centre of the room is terminal on a rotating platform and chair. Built into the wall is a row of CRT screens of which only one kicks into life as Dallas thumps the old-style keyboard. The screen initialises with a 3d pattern appearing to rotate and then after a series of cursors bouncing back and forward and random symbols populating the display, columns of ships functions are revealed.

Under the heading “over monitoring address matrix” we see heat, waste, attitude control and inertial dampeners listed. Dallas selects “Interface 2037” to begin directly texting mother.

“What’s the story mother?” he types.

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There are other interactions with the computer later in the film with both Dallas and Ripley. At first glance it is just light green glowing text on a green screen which was what technology in 1979 was using. However, upon closer inspection and nice detail is added. As the text is revealed from left to right a glowing yellowish character behaves like a rolling cursor moving just ahead of the green text. Slowing down the animation there are changing typeset characters which are normal letters in some cases, back to front or upside, but some are not ones I recognize.  I expect this is to appear as random symbols mutating and converting into normal text.

 

One last very cool aspect of this screen is the cursor that shoots across from the right and ends just before the beginning of the new scrolling text line. It is comprised of a green glowing horizontal line that expands in length, turns completely white when it’s at its longest length, then reduces again. At full speed it is only a couple of frames of animation but it totally sells the idea that this is a purpose build futuristic ships computer. Then combined with the sound design as each line scrolls to the clatter of telex machine sounds, and tones, with additional beeps for every keystroke of the crew member at the terminal.