Science Art: Car 5400, where are you?, 1965.

Scientific illustration of a 1960s computer system, the Control Data 210, as seen in a magazine advertisement.
Scientific illustration of a 1960s computer system, the Control Data 210, as seen in a magazine advertisement.

This is an advertisement in the back of the May/June 1965 issue of Information Display, the journal of the Society for Information Display. It’s a technical magazine for computer science from the years before “personal computers” were a thing. This guy’s tracking 125,000 train cars using his Control Data 210 Computer-Remote, and reading a screen display in place of “paper.”

The slogan, just in case you’re unfamiliar, is a reference to Car 54, Where Are You?, a cop-show sit com that was popular in 1965. Had a catchy theme song with a guy plaintively calling, “Car 54, where aarrrre yoooou?”

If you’re going to sell computers, you need to show you’re up on pop culture.