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"...a lot of people find adventure on the Internet. That's their idea of being interactive. My idea of being interactive is going on out and doing it on the street."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Universal Dictionary | ||
| A machine that provided references to anything known. |
Whenever Mr. Kiku wanted to know something, he'd just check the universal dictionary terminal on his desk.
| The universal dictionary in the British Museum was not more knowledgeable than the one in the Under Secretary's office; its working parts occupied an entire building in another part of the Capital, and its staff of cyberneticists, semanticians and encyclopedists endlessly fed its hunger for facts. |
| From The Star Beast,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1954 Additional resources -
|
This entry gives a very clear picture of what a massive computer installation looked like in the 1950's; it was very large and required a large staff to keep it running. Here's an example of a mid-1950's computer - the IBM 704:
The IBM 704 was considered the world's first super-computer and the first machine to incorporate floating-point hardware. The 704 used magnetic core memory that was faster and more reliable than the magnetic drum storage found in the 701.
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Tech news articles related to The Star Beast
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
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news articles:
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- WolframAlpha Is Not A Search Engine
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| Can An Entire Brain Be Simulated In A Computer? |
| Illustris: The Next Generation Of Universe Simulation |
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