Thread: Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?
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Old 09-25-2016, 02:07 PM   #24627
WT Sharpe
Bah, humbug!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MickeyC View Post
Speaking of 2001 (also one of my favs), do you know what HAL stood for?
Quote:
Originally Posted by orlok View Post
My understanding is that it doesn't stand for anything. It's just the letter before each of those in "IBM".
If you take "HAL" and bump each letter up one character, you do indeed get "IMB". I remember an article in a 1968(?) issue of Playboy in which it was mentioned how the story was so carefully planned that even the computer's name had hidden significance. Alas, Clarke has explained since that it was just a serendipitous fluke that it worked out like that. Kind of similar to what Douglas Adams said about the whole 6 x 9 equaling 42 in a base 13 system thing. Just a fluke, unplanned by either author.
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