H14, Jim Henson's snarky Muppet computer. Photo courtesy of the Jim Henson Company. Jim Henson's sketches for Computer H14. Photo courtesy of the Jim Henson Company. Jim Henson with Computer H14. Photo courtesy of the Jim Henson Company.

Computer H14 isn't shy about telling you how great he is.

"The machine possesses supreme intelligence, a faultless memory, and a beautiful soul," H14 says of himself, before vaporizing a cute little bird who just happens to fly by – and promptly correcting the bit about the beautiful soul. You see, H14 can nuke even the cutest of birds without batting an electrical eyelash, and that's nothing but a good thing. As "mere mortals wallow in a sea of emotionalism," it can concentrate on the task at hand: "digesting oceans of information in a single all-encompassing gulp."

H14 then demonstrates this all-encompassing gulp – and proceeds to hurl additional insults at the mere mortals. "The computer machine would function flawlessly if not for the blundering clumsiness of incompetent man," he says. "Without man, the machine could continue working perfectly, never slowing down, never malfunctioning."

>'The computer machine would function flawlessly if not for the blundering clumsiness of incompetent man. Without man, the machine could continue working perfectly, never slowing down, never malfunctioning' Computer H14

At that point, he begins to slow down and malfunction, and the malfunctions only get worse – until a human hand reaches over to wind him up again. Then, as he throws more insults at humankind, he works himself into a kind of computer frenzy, explodes into tiny pieces, and ultimately calls for a mechanic.

No, Computer H14 wasn't a real machine. He was a Muppet created by Jim Henson himself. But he was the subject of a very real film commissioned in 1963 by telecom giant AT&T, aka Ma Bell (see video below).

Shown at an AT&T corporate get-together called the Bell Business Communications Seminar, the film aimed to entertain the business people who came to the seminar to learn about AT&T's and its 22 subsidiaries, the so-called Baby Bells that helped Ma Bell run the country's telephone system. "They wanted to bring Jim to make some films to lighten up the proceedings and keep people awake," says Karen Falk, the archives director at the Jim Henson Company, the outfit that oversees the legacy of the man who created Kermit the Frog and Big Bird and Fozzie the Bear – not to mention Computer H14. But the film also sought to educate all those business people.

AT&T organized its Communications Seminar in an effort to sell the customers of the Baby Bells on the virtues of machine-to-machine communication, to show them that businesspeople of the future would conduct their business through wires and microwaves and satellites, to convince them they should embrace this technology as quickly as possible. Ma Bell was trying "to position its growing machine-to-machine communications services in the new Computer Age," says Jack Byrne, one of the organizers of the Chicago get-together, in a recent blog post.

By the early '60s, Byrne explains, companies had grown to depend on enormous IBM mainframe computers, and they were forced to install a new mainframe at each and every one of their branch offices. AT&T aimed to replace all those duplicate machines with a system that would allow a single mainframe to communicate with several remote locations via high-speed data connections. Ma Bell already had a near monopoly on voice communications, and this was its next conquest.

The rub was that many people feared a robopocalypse – a dystopian world where machines made man obsolete. Ma Bell also needed to reassure people that its machine-to-machine communication wouldn't take over the planet. And what better way to ease their fears than Computer H14?

The Muppet was funny in that unmistakably Henson way – equipped with exhaust pipes and a flashing red light and some sort of rotating mechanical arm reminiscent of a railroad crossing – and it had already worked the seminar circuit, appearing at shows in Germany for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Information Agency, the government organization that once spread U.S. propaganda overseas. Plus, Jim Henson understood the task at hand.

Henson and his partner Jerry Juhl "were certainly intrigued by technology and the development of computers," says Falk. "But they also felt very strongly about the difference between man and machines. There was a celebration of technology, but also a recognition about its lack of human qualities, like understanding and creativity." Henson gives H14 the superhuman ability to digest "vast oceans of information," but it still needs humans to wind him up – and repair him when he explodes into tiny pieces.

Presumably, H14 found the human mechanic he so desperately needed, because he later turned up in a second AT&T short film. Another effort to educate the Baby Bells, this film (below) concerns an electronics company run by a guy named Charlie Magnetico. The company's signature product – the Three-way Bipolar Magnolytic Taflorated Conducer – is malfunctioning, "causing certain minor side effects," and apparently, these side effects include the instant destruction of intercontinental ballistic missiles before they even leave the launchpad.

Luckily, H14 diagnoses the problem – a lapse in data communications and a missing circuit – and he provides a set of "flawless" recommendations that result in increased productivity, improved performance, and gobs of extra time for Charlie Magnetico – played by Juhl – to think all sorts of big thoughts. In short, AT&T's machine-to-machine communications save the day.

But in the end, this film conveys much the same message as the one that came before it: Machines can make life easier, but not without the help of humans. H14's recommendations are flawless only until one of those missiles nearly lands on his head.

Videos courtesy of AT&T.

Correction 13:42 EST 10/11/13: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the Henson film was intended for the "Baby Bells." It was intended for the customers of the Baby Bells.