Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncovered by AT&T: Watch Online

Before Jim Hen­son joined Sesame Street in 1969, the great pup­peteer took on var­i­ous projects dur­ing the 60s, some­times cre­at­ing exper­i­men­tal films (for exam­ple, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short Time Piece), oth­er times pro­duc­ing primers on pup­pet mak­ing, and then pur­su­ing the occa­sion­al com­mer­cial project — like the one just uncov­ered by AT&T.

Back in 1963, Hen­son was asked to cre­ate a short film for a Bell Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sem­i­nar held in Chica­go. The con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers sent a three-page memo to Hen­son out­lin­ing the main themes of the con­fer­ence — one being the strange and some­times fraught rela­tion­ship between man and machine. Hen­son’s film only runs three min­utes, but it gets the mes­sage across … and then some.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show