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.