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2001 HALs Technology

If you have seen the film "2001" you probably remember the bit near the end when Dave is disconnecting HAL by pulling out his memory card things. This is the part where HAL says "Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave."

The next think you hear, after the slurried song, is HAL's address to the board of directors :-). This is the bit that is important to this exercise, HAL says "Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational on 12th January 1997".

This film was released in 1968 about a year after the first moon landing, which was accomplished with programmable systems that had less computational power that a today's calculators, so at that point 1997 was a date to the future at which we may have computers like HAL.

As it trend out this did not come to pass, so on 12th January 1997 at least the BBS Alt. sci-fi celebrated HAL's unbirthday. This event was nothing more that a joke at the time, but It was important as this was the fast and last public Com that I took part in, this was because the traffic was dominated by the old boys that were discussing HAS speech and programming etc :-(.

I thought this concept of the HAL 900 system was cool because at that point in time ever faster, more powerful computer systems and technologies associated with computing were and are still being developed at speeds that make them cheaper, almost as fast as it is becoming obsolete. For example we are fast approaching the huge steerage capacities that a star ship Enterprise D uses!

I am the website administrator of the Wandle industrial museum (http://www.wandle.org). Established in 1983 by local people determined to ensure that the history of the valley was no longer neglected but enhanced awareness its heritage for the use and benefits of the community.

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