Happy Birthday, HAL!
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the we learn the computer HAL 9000 became operational on January 12, 1997… which means today is HAL’s 17th birthday!
Some HAL related trivia to celebrate the adolescent’s birthday!
HAL 9000 never once says, “Good Morning, Dave,” despite this line being one of his most recognized quotations.
Originally, HAL was to be called Athena and have a female voice. According to Keir Dullea (Dave Bowman), Nigel Davenport and Martin Balsam were hired and later replaced before Douglas Rain finally landed the role of HAL. Davenport was actually on-set in England during filming, reading HAL’s lines off-camera so that Dullea and Gary Lockwood could react to them. Apparently, Stanley Kubrick thought that Davenport’s English accent was too distracting, so after a few weeks he dismissed him and for the remainder of the shoot HAL’s lines were read by an assistant director who, according to Dullea, had a Cockney accent so thick that lines like “Better take a stress pill, Dave” came out like “Better tyke a stress pill, Dyve”. Later Balsam was hired and recorded HAL’s voice in New York, but again when Kubrick heard his lines he wasn’t satisfied, so he finally got Rain to re-record everything during post-production. Rain recorded in Canada, speaking his lines barefoot with his feet resting on a pillow to get the relaxed tone. For the sequel, Peter Hyams’ 2010 (1984), the opposite process was used: Rain recorded all of HAL’s dialogue during pre-production prior to principal photography. That’s why, to this day, Dullea and Rain have never actually spoken directly to each other or met in person.
Incrementing each letter of “HAL” gives you “IBM”. Writer Arthur C. Clarke claimed this was unintentional, and if he had noticed ahead of time, he would have changed it. HAL stands for Heuristic Algorithmic Computer. IBM product placements appear in the movie as well, including the computer panels in the spaceplane that docks with the space station, the forearm control panel on Dave’s spacesuit, and the portable viewscreens on which Dave and Frank watch “The World Tonight”.
In both the book and film, HAL’s creator, Dr Chandra has what is almost certainly a deliberately chosen name. Chandra, as well as being a common Indian surname, is a name of the Hindu lunar deity, and the word for “moon” in Hindi. Dr Chandra’s full first name, Sivasubramanian, can be translated as “Dear priest of Shiva”. Shiva, the name of a supreme Hindu deity, carries as one of its meanings “the one who admits no imperfection”. Therefore Dr Chandra, the creator of a computer believing itself incapable of mistakes has a uniquely appropriate first name. Arthur C. Clarke, who spent much of his life in Sri Lanka (where Hindu is a major religion) would almost certainly have known these meanings.
In the French-language version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL’s name is CARL, Cerveau Analytique de Recherche et de Liaison (Analytic Brain for Research and Communication)
The HAL 9000 computer was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003 (inaugural class).
HAL is listed as the 13th-greatest film villain in the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains.
And this: HAL 9000: A Logical Progression to Breakdown, a terrific analysis of the movie from HAL’s perspective.
Happy Birthday, HAL!
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