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wasoxygen · 2282 days ago · link · · parent · post: Sci-Fi club no. 36: The Last Question discussion
Dyson has other things on his mind.According to his autobiography In Memory Yet Green, Asimov coined the name in imitation of UNIVAC, an early mainframe computer. Asimov had assumed the name "Univac" denoted a computer with a single vacuum tube (it actually is an acronym for "Universal Automatic Computer"), and on the basis that a computer with many such tubes would be more powerful, called his fictional computer "Multivac". His later short story "The Last Question", however, expands the AC suffix to be "analog computer".
