#2001 a space odyssey computer name manual
#2001 a space odyssey computer name software

(Years later, Winograd, now on the faculty of Stanford, had among his students Larry Page, a co-founder of Google.) Later at MIT, Terry Winograd developed a program that recognized types of wooden blocks and was able to stack them on one another, in response to simple commands posed to it by a human using a Teletype. In 1966 MIT Professor Joe Weizenbaum published a description of a program called ELIZA, which in his words, mimicked a “Rogerian Psychotherapist.” So, if you queried the program “I have problems dealing with my mother,” the computer would respond “Your Mother?” Or “Please go on.” Users assumed that the computer understood the statement, but in fact ELIZA simply looked for key words or phrases and crafted replies that seemed real. Credit: National Air and Space Museum, NASM-9A12923 Ordway III (left) and Harry Lange (right) pose with an EVA Pod in the Discovery One pod bay interior set of the motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968) MGM-British Studios, Borehamwood, England, circa 1966-1967. Better progress was made by communicating with the computer via a Teletypewriter.įrederick I.

Computer scientists in the mid-to-late 1960s were making strides in this field, although we now know that true voice recognition and synthesis would not come until decades later. Kubrick and his scriptwriters assumed that by the year 2001 computers would be able to converse with humans in natural language. (1920-2012), one of the programmers of the Apollo Guidance Computer at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. I’ve also been told that it was named to honor J. It was not supposed to have anything to do with the fictitious character in 2001.

#2001 a space odyssey computer name manual

NASA developed a special programming language tailored for aerospace applications, which the programmers named “HAL/S.” The acronym was said to stand for “High order Assembly Language/Shuttle,” although the manual does not state that explicitly.

#2001 a space odyssey computer name software

Not long after the film appeared, NASA began development of software for the Space Shuttle.

IBM built the Instrument Units at a facility in Huntsville its computers were built at an IBM plant in Owego, New York. IBM was also responsible for the Saturn V’s Instrument Unit, the guidance and control system that guided the rocket on a trajectory out of Earth’s orbit. Among them was the large IBM 7090 mainframe.If you’ve read the book or seen the film Hidden Figures, you know how important an IBM 7090 installed at NASA’s Langley Research Center was to the Mercury program. IBM computers were in heavy use at Huntsville and throughout NASA.

One of his principal advisers on the script was Fred Ordway (1927-2014), who worked with Wernher von Braun at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Saturn V rockets were being designed. But Kubrick did have a close relationship with IBM in the making of the film. Kubrick and his scriptwriters assumed that by the year 2001 computers would be able to converse with humans in natural language.Īlthough the letters H, A, and L appear just before I, B, and M in the alphabet, the choice of the name and its relation to the IBM Corporation was likely a coincidence. What was the state of computing in 1968, and in what directions were computer scientists expecting it to evolve? What kinds of advice did Kubrick get? Some of those predictions came true of course others did not. 2001 stands out among other science fiction films of its day, in part because Kubrick consulted experts in the computer and space fields to portray a realistic and scientifically-grounded expectation of where computing and space exploration would be in 2001 (at the time of filming, 33 years into the future). As we celebrate the 50 th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’d like to share some reflections on the most famous character in the film: HAL, the on-board computer whose mental breakdown kills most of the crew near the end of its journey.