[Symbiote]

Railway signaling goes a lot further back than that.

Steel cables connected between a mechanical signal and a lever, including fail-safes should cables break.

A special baton to carry, only a train carrying a baton is allowed to move.

These are still in use in some places.

[arethuza]

Jacquard looms are even older than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine

[JoeAltmaier]

I don't go back that far. My first computer was an Altair 8800.

[arethuza]

I once met a chap who had done programming with a hand drill....

Ancient mainframe controlling a steel plant, booted from a paper tape that had decades before been replaced with a leather strap. He need to alter something in the boot process - so had to resort to a hand drill :-)