TIL: All the computers on the set of Jurassic Park were real, and someone has finally catalogued them in 'excruciating detail' because life, uh, finds a way

Certain questions keep me awake at night. What is the purpose of consciousness? What will the world look like for our children? Which keyboard, exactly, is Samuel L Jackson’s character in Jurassic Park using when he attempts to access the systems and prevent more dinosaur escapes?

Luckily, the last one now has an answer: it’s the SGI Granite Keyboard (Indigo Style), of course! This fossilised piece of tech is listed on the website of Fabien Sanglard, someone who’s taken it upon themselves to go through the original film and describe all the computers and related components in “excruciating detail.”

God bless you, that’s all I can say. Where else can I find the information that everyone’s favourite super nerd, Dennis Nedry, primarily uses two Macs and one SGI Iris Crimson at his control room desk, alongside a Motorola Envoy personal digital assistant?

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In fact, Sanglard has even brought some official reference material into the equation. Quoting from the book “The Making of Jurassic Park”:

“Everything in the set was real. We couldn’t fake any of it, because audiences are so sophisticated now in their knowledge of computers. All told, $875,000 worth of computer hardware loaned by Silicon Graphics, $350,000 worth from Apple and some $500,000 in additional hardware and software went into equipping both the set and off-stage control room.”

A dinosaur preparing to attack

(Image credit: Saber Interactive)

Now try this one on for size. The hurricane graphic seemingly operating in real-time on one of the computer screens was in fact created by Earthwatch, a piece of software developed for TV meteorologists. This trivia tidbit was revealed by an email from Gregory Gosson, who states:

“It was fantastic-looking stuff for the day, but the render times were very slow. The meteorologists would start the render sequence and then go to lunch. It could play the resulting animations in real-time, but could not render in real-time.”

Next you’ll be telling me the dinosaurs weren’t real either.

Sanglard’s dedication to the bit is impressive, as is the realisation that so much of the tech on screen appears to be authentic. I assumed at least one of the under-desk PCs was a spray-painted cardboard box, but apparently not.

One last fact before you go? The main control room screen has five machines underneath it, each with thousands of blinking red LEDs on the front. As Sanglard points out, given the massive loans of expensive computing hardware, these are quite possibly five genuine Thinking Machines CM-5 computers [PDF], priced at the time at $46,000 per unit.

Pretty rawr-some, no? Sorry, I had to. Please don’t fire me, Dave [you’re lucky, if it wasn’t late on a Friday and I didn’t mind dealing with the paperwork… -Ed.]