ar-cam — Automated Research

HORIZON: THE MYSTERY OF AR-CAM
BBC Two, Wednesday 14th November, 9.15pm

In November 1974, a classified government research facility was shut down without explanation. Staff were evacuated. The site was sealed. No official statement was ever issued.

What was happening inside — and why it ended so abruptly — has never been made public.

At the heart of the facility was AR-CAM: the Automated Research and Computational Automatic Machine. Those who worked on it describe a computer unlike anything built before or since. Those who know what it was being asked to do are not talking.

Ten years on, Horizon investigates the project that the Ministry of Defence still refuses to discuss — and asks the question nobody in Whitehall will answer.

What exactly was AR-CAM learning to do?

Horizon is on BBC Two every Wednesday at 9.15pm.