DENVER, Aug. 26 - Ten years ago, the new Denver International Airport marched boldly into the future with a computerized baggage-handling system that immediately became famous for its ability to mangle or misplace a good portion of everything that wandered into its path.

Now the book is closing on the brilliant machine that couldn't sort straight. Sometime over the next few weeks, in an anticlimactic moment marked and mourned by just about nobody, the only airline that ever used any part of the system will pull the plug. An episode bowing equally to John Henry, Rube Goldberg and Hal from "2001" will end.

People will be fully back in charge.

"Automation always looks good on paper," said Veronica Stevenson, a lead baggage handler for United Airlines and president of the union local that represents United's 1,300 or so baggage handlers in Denver. "Sometimes you need real people."

The handoff in baggage handling also illustrates how much has changed in airline economics since Denver's grandiose dream was envisioned in the early 1990's. Airlines that were flush then are struggling and looking for ways to save money now, as United will do by shutting down computerized baggage-moving.

Technology, too, has brought change. Back then, the big-brained mainframe doing it all from command central was the model of high tech. Today the very idea of it sounds like a cold-war-era relic, engineers say. Decentralization and mobile computing technology have taken over just about everything, allowing airlines, warehouse operators and shippers like FedEx to learn with just a few clicks the whereabouts of an item in motion, a feature that was supposed to be a chief strength of the baggage system.

The premise of Denver's plan was as big as the West. The distance from a centralized baggage check-in to the farthest gate -- about a mile -- dictated expansive new thinking, planners said, and technology would make the new airport a marvel. Travelers who arrived for check-in or stepped off a plane would have their bags whisked across the airport with minimal human intervention. The result would be fewer flight delays, less waiting at luggage carousels and big savings in airline labor costs.