From: utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!coletti Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: 2001 Comment - (nf) Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.276 Posted: Mon Jul 26 15:27:23 1982 Received: Sat Jul 31 07:48:36 1982 #R:alice:-80600:uiucdcs:10600003:000:401 uiucdcs!coletti Jul 26 14:57:00 1982 Re: 2001 comment (on HAL's name) According to Arthur C. Clarke's book "The making of 2001" (or perhaps "Lost worlds of 2001"), HAL stands for "Heuristicly programmed ALgorithmic computer". The idea was that HAL encompased the two basic programming techniques, giving it, so to speak, the best of both worlds. They actually were rather embarrassed when the mapping to IBM was discovered.