Jurassic ParkAlthough beloved as a movie, it has been the subject of sarcastic memes for the infamous line in which one of the characters declares: “This is a Unix system, I know!” while using a computer with an unusual 3D file manager interface.
Despite the memes, the film’s production team was meticulous in accurately sourcing the right PCs (and adjacent details) for the sets, which isn’t a huge surprise, given writer Michael Crichton’s opinion. background with computing and his obsessive attention to detail in the book on which the film is based.
This became clear thanks to a little research by Google software engineer. Fabien Sanglard. He scanned the film and elected every specifically identifiable piece of hardware he could see, he listed what they were and shared context from other sources about their specifications, costs, and how they ended up in production.
Frankly, none of this is new information; people have been discussing the technology in Jurassic Park for years. But it hasn’t all been put in one place in a highly readable analysis for a long time, and it gained some traction this week in reddit and Hacker News. Further, Jurassic Park has been on our minds given the recent passing of Dear actor Sam Neill.
The hardware identified includes (among other things) five Thinking Machines CM-5 systems, a Motorola Envoy PDA, and several state-of-the-art SGI workstations, including an IRIS Crimson and an SGI R4000 Indigo. For additional background, Sanglard shared this quote from Jurassic Park Special effects coordinator Cory Faucher, as seen in the book. The creation of Jurassic Park:
