HAL 9000

HAL became operational in Urbana, Illinois, at the HAL Plant (the University of Illinois' Coordinated Science Laboratory, where the ILLIAC computers were built).

The film says this occurred in 1992, while the book gives 1997 as HAL's birth year.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL begins to malfunction in subtle ways and, as a result, the decision is made to shut down HAL in order to prevent more serious malfunctions.

The sequence of events and manner in which HAL is shut down differs between the novel and film versions of the story.

In the film, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole consider disconnecting HAL's cognitive circuits when he appears to be mistaken in reporting the presence of a fault in the spacecraft's communications antenna.

They attempt to conceal what they are saying, but are unaware that HAL can read their lips.

Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue its programmed directives.

HAL proceeds to kill Poole while he is repairing the ship.

When Bowman goes to rescue Poole, HAL locks him out of the ship, then disconnects the life support systems of the other hibernating crew members, killing them in their sleep.

Dave circumvents HAL's control, entering the ship by manually opening an emergency airlock with his pod's clamps, and ejecting himself out of the pod using the explosive bolts in its door.

The novel explains that HAL is unable to resolve a conflict between his general mission to relay information accurately and orders specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and

Poole the true purpose of the mission.

With the crew dead, he reasons, he would not need to lie to them.

He fabricates the failure of the AE-35 unit so that their deaths would appear accidental.

In the novel, the orders to disconnect HAL come from Dave and Frank's superiors on Earth.

After Frank is killed while attempting to repair the communications antenna as his oxygen gets disconnected and gets pushed out to deep space, Dave begins to revive his hibernating crewmates, but is foiled when HAL vents the ship's atmosphere into the vacuum of space, killing the awakening crew members and almost killing Dave.

Dave is only narrowly saved when he finds his way to an emergency chamber which has its own oxygen supply and a spare space suit inside.

In both versions, Bowman then proceeds to shut down the machine.

In the film, HAL's central core is depicted as a crawlspace full of brightly lit computer modules mounted in arrays from which they can be inserted or removed.

Bowman shuts down HAL by removing modules from service one by one; as he does so, HAL's consciousness degrades.

HAL regurgitates material that was programmed into him early in his memory, including announcing the date he became operational as 12 January 1992 (in the novel, it's 1997).

When HAL's logic is completely gone, he begins singing the song "Daisy Bell" (in actuality, the first song sung by a computer).

HAL's final act of any significance is to prematurely play a prerecorded message from Mission Control which reveals the true reasons for the mission to Jupiter.

Links
Wikipedia> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000
IMDb> www.imdb.com/character/ch0002900/bio
2001 Wiki> 2001.wikia.com/wiki/HAL_9000

Copyright Owner
Warner Bros.> www.warnerbros.com/

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