Can a computer produce art? Sally Gray put the question to Harold Cohen in 1996
The It'll Never Work clip, filmed at the University of California, San Diego, passed 390,000 views in four days, one of ten uploads in a week that also revisited St Kilda and the first high-speed trains.
BBC ArchiveStory of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
1996: Can a Computer Produce Art? | It'll Never Work | BBC Archive
AARON was the artist, and Harold Cohen called himself its mentor. In a 1996 report for the children's science show It'll Never Work, presenter Sally Gray visits the visual arts department at UC San Diego to watch Cohen's program paint, and to talk with the British painter who wrote it. Thirty years on, that question in the title reads very differently, and the comment section knows it. Many viewers set the whimsy of 1996 beside the AI arguments of today, others marvel at how sharp the old broadcast still looks, and a few remember being glued to the show as children.
Behind it, a Newsround report from 1976 is moving almost as quickly in its first day. Lucy Mathen rides British Rail's new high-speed diesel, has a cup of tea on the way, and reaches Cardiff four minutes early. Chris Brasher's 1980 film about the last St Kildans returning to their islands, fifty years after the evacuation, found its crowd too.
The week also carried a sadder upload. After the death of Dame Esther Rantzen at 86, the channel posted her 1996 reflection on the That's Life episode in which Nicholas Winton sat, unaware, among people he had rescued from the Holocaust as children.
All of this kept the channel running well above its usual pace, adding about 2.6 million views. Among TV network channels of its size, only The Big Bang Theory added more.
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What viewers say
Well, we’re here. I wish it was this whimsical
@Hyper_fixations_See it on YouTubeThe archiving of this piece is amazing! It's actually broadcast quality!
@HAWXLEADERSee it on YouTubeIt'll Never Work was an awesome show.
@Cartoonman154See it on YouTube
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The videos drawing views on BBC Archive right now
1976: British Rail introduces high speed trains | BBC Archive97,171 views · 2026-10-04
1980: Residents Return to St Kilda After 50 Years | BBC Archive82,999 views · 2026-10-03
2000: Windows, Linux, Oracle and the Internet | The Money Programme |…67,414 views · 2026-09-29
1996: Dame Esther Rantzen on extraordinary TV moment | BBC Archive66,029 views · 2026-10-01
1969: Life After School | At a Time Like This | BBC Archive65,509 views · 2026-09-28
- Channel
- BBC Archive
- Subscribers
- 789,000 ▲ 2,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 2,630,744
- Videos published this week
- 10
- Video published
- October 1, 2026
- Video views so far
- 390,913
- Views on its first day
- 95,124
The numbers
Here are the figures behind BBC Archive's week.
💡 Test your knowledge
Linus Torvalds, interviewed in the channel's Money Programme clip about Windows 2000, created Linux while studying in which country?
Torvalds began Linux in 1991 as a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
