A couple of times in the game I've ran across these big computer-like machines with blue screens, and the Science Theme in Tenpenny Tower comes with one that's positioned near the front door. I was wondering if anybody knows what the heck they are and what they're used for? Are they based on a real scientific machine used during the 1950's or are they just some fantasy science fiction device created just to look cool? Since my character is the scientist-type (well sorta) I'd at least like to have an idea of what some of the machines in her Science Lab are used for. :unsure2:

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to but I believe all of that science hardware falls in to the above 'looks cool' category.

I tried to find a picture but couldn't. All I can say is that the Science Theme in both houses comes with them. In the Megaton House it gets placed in the extra room with the shelves and small table, and in Tenpenny Tower it's placed beside the front door near the big wooden shelf.

I know most of the machines in Fallout 3 fall into the "Cool Science" category of the 1950's pop culture, but some of them I'm sure have actual uses. The machine I'm talking about kind of looks like an old microscope I had as a kid that was shaped like a computer with a screen, but you placed glass slates with bacteria under a light and they showed up big on the screen and you turned these two knobs to adjust the quality of the screen. Maybe that's what the machine is? A giant microscope?

I always thought they were defunct http://www.dansmc.com/microfiche_reader.jpg machines. Are you talking about those things that lay around in the broken down museums, libraries, and schools?

Could it be a http://www.mccullagh.org/image/10d-15/cray-supercomputer.html

Yeah I have seen a lot of them in the Arlington Library, which made me think that maybe they were for reading old newspaper articles. But now I think maybe they're supposed to be like those big microscopes that are sort of shaped like computer monitors and allow you to see bacteria on the screen. The way the screen looks is kind of similar because it's not really like a glass TV or computer screen, it has a bit of a fuzzy look (I don't really know how else to explain it...), and it has knobs for turnig which I'm guessing is to improve the quality of the screen.

I think that's the most plausible possability. :shrug:

Edit: No I don't think it's a supercomputer, that would be those tall metal machines with all the flashing buttons and lights.

What they probably did was take something real from our own world (e.g. the microfiche machine) and then modified it so it looked like a couple things at once...just so it would look cool.

Yeah you're probably right, it's all part of the "Cool Science" from the 1950's where people used to invent all sorts of crazy scientific machines for fictional TV shows and comic books like Star Trek. I'm sure they're all based on the concept of machines that actually did exist in the 1950's such as super computers though.

Well anyways I'll just pretend it's a fancy microscope that my girl uses for her evil experiments.

Yes, those are modeled after microfiche viewers. On a real one, the screen is ground glass with a light behind it to project the image from the microfilm, and the knobs are used to focus and align the image on the screen. They're being obsoleted by .tif and .pdf technology, but they'll still be around for a while.

OK, I looked up what a microfiche is and it seems my first theory when I saw them in the game was right, that they're used for reading old newspaper articles and such. That explains why they're commonly found in schools and libraries.

All this time I thought it was a microscope like the one I had years ago.