[GreenKeys] My experiences and questions

[Bill Henry]

Doug,

Not quite right!  I am not sure where you obtained your information.

The name "HAL" (all caps) comes from "one letter ahead of IBM".  It's 
a dumb thing but three of us graduate students thought it was "neat" 
back in 1966.  The "company" started in the fall of 1966 - as "HAL 
Devices" - selling HP Hot Carrier diode and Fairchild RTL IC's out of 
our car trunks at hamfests.  In 1968, we were VERY surprised to watch 
the movie "2001" and find that the computer was named "Hal" (not all 
caps) and was "born" in Urbana, Illinois.  Turns out that Arthur 
Clark had friends here at the University of Illinois who were working 
on the Illiac computer - and on "artificial intelligence."  He said 
that was why he placed the birthplace of the computer in Urbana.  His 
choice of "Hal" as the computer's name is explained early in his book 
"2001" - an acronym that I can never remember (Heuristic something 
something).  By the way - in this case, the movie made by Stanley 
Kubric predated the book.

Regarding Illiac computers, in the 1960's the Digital Computer Lab 
(DCL) was across the men's track from a little house that the Synton 
Amateur Radio club used (W9YH).  The two 150 ft. towers that had been 
used by WILL AM were on the south end of that field and the radio 
club had a dipole strung between them.  There was an "uneasy truce" 
between DCL and W9YH.  Iliac didn't like RF from the BC-610 
(especially on 80M RTTY) and our receivers certanly didn't like the 
RFI hash from DCL.  Three of us students came close to not continuing 
in EE one year due to efforts to shield the BC-610 - only partly 
successful.  W9YH later moved to south campus and that ended 
DCL/Synton problems.

The name and logo "HAL" is a registered trademark of HAL 
Communications Corp.  I met Arthur at a show and we both agreed not 
to mess in the others fields - hi!  HAL Devices became HAL 
Communications Corp. in 1972 and I am the last of the original partners.

Bill Henry
President
HAL Communications Corp.


At 10:30 AM 5/8/2009 -0500, Douglas W. Jones wrote:

>On May 7, 2009, at 4:58 PM, John D. Kopke wrote:
>
> > BTW,I made a incredible discovery. What are the odds that HAL
> > Communications and
> > Hal from 2001, A Space Odyssey are both made in Urbana ,Illinois .
> > THEY ARE!!!!!
>
>HAL Communications was named after HAL from 2001, quite
>deliberately.  HAL, the
>computer, was made in Urbana because, in the mid 1960's, Urbana was
>the center
>of the supercomputer universe, with ILLIAC 2 recently decommissioned,
>ILLIAC 3
>still under construction (it was never finished) and ILLIAC 4 in the
>planning.
>These computers were extraordinary machines, for their time,
>particularly ILLIAC 4,
>and captured the imagination of Arthur C. Clark.
>
>Clark and Kubrik's movie, in turn, provided a name for a small startup
>in Urbana.  Asking about the odds is not meaningful in this context
>because it
>is not a cincidence.
>
>                 Doug Jones
>                 jones at cs.uiowa.edu
>
>
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