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Fictional Computer
Computers have often been used as fictional objects in literature, movies and in other forms of media. Fictional computers tend to be considerably more sophisticated than anything yet devised in the real world. This is a list of computers that have appeared in notable works of fiction. The work may be about the computer, or the computer may be an important element of the story. Only static computers are included. Robots and other fictional computers that are described as existing in a mobile or humanlike form are discussed in a separate list of fictional robots and androids. Literature Before 1950 * The Engine, a kind of mechanical information generator featured in Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels''. This is considered to be the first description of a fictional device that in any way resembles a computer. (1726) * The Machine from E. M. Forster's short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) * The Brain from Lionel Britton’s ''Brain: A Play of the Whole Earth'' (1930). * The Go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as Computer program, programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the Computer hardware, hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation. This term may also refer to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster. A broad range of Programmable logic controller, industrial and Consumer electronics, consumer products use computers as control systems. Simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls are included, as are factory devices like industrial robots and computer-aided design, as well as general-purpose devi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert A
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ipecac
Syrup of ipecac (), or simply ipecac, is a drug that was once widely used as an expectorant (in low doses) and a rapid-acting emetic (in higher doses). It is obtained from the dried rhizome and roots of the ipecacuanha plant (''Carapichea ipecacuanha''), from which it derives its name. It is no longer used in medicine. In particular, the rapidly induced forceful vomiting produced by ipecac was considered for many years to be an important front-line treatment for orally ingested poisons. However, subsequent studies (including a comprehensive 2005 meta-study) revealed the stomach purging produced by ipecac to be far less effective at lowering total body poison concentrations than the adsorption effect of oral activated charcoal (which is effective through the entire gastrointestinal tract and is often coupled with whole bowel irrigation). Ipecac also presents a small risk of overdose (being a mild poison itself) and a major risk of esophagitis and aspiration pneumonia if used to p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one package. It was Turing-complete and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming. Although ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory (which later became a part of the Army Research Laboratory), its first program was a study of the feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon. ENIAC was completed in 1945 and first put to work for practical purposes on December 10, 1945.* ENIAC was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania on February 15, 1946, having cost $487,000 (), and was heralded as a "Giant Brain" by the press. It had a speed on the order of one thousand times faster than that of electro-mechanical machines; this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Player Piano (novel)
''Player Piano'' is the debut novel, first novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., published in 1952. The novel depicts a dystopia of automation partly inspired by the author's time working at General Electric, describing the negative impact technology can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works. Plot While most Americans were fighting in the third world war, the nation's managers and engineers responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed factories to operate with only a few workers. Ten years after the wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the US Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He adopted his nephews after his siste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Astronauts
''The Astronauts'' (Polish: ''Astronauci'') is the first science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem published as a book, in 1951. To write the novel, Lem received advance payment from publishing house Czytelnik (Warsaw). The book became an instant success and was translated into several languages (first into Czech, which was published in 1956). This success convinced Lem to switch to the career of a science-fiction author. ''The Astronauts'', written for the youth, is set in the Communist utopian future. To get it published under the communist regime in Poland, Lem had to insert frequent references to the ideals of communism. Decades later, Lem declared about ''The Astronauts'': The inability to ever understand alien civilizations, a frequent theme of Lem's future works, appears here for the first time. Plot summary The introduction describes the fall of the Tunguska meteorite (1908) and the subsequent expedition of Leonid Kulik. The hypothesis about the cras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanisław Lem
Stanisław Herman Lem (; 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction and essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology, and literary criticism. Many of his science fiction stories are of satirical and humorous character. Lem's books have been translated into more than 50 languages and have sold more than 45 million copies. Worldwide, he is best known as the author of the 1961 novel ''Solaris (novel), Solaris''. In 1976 Theodore Sturgeon wrote that Lem was the most widely read science fiction writer in the world. Lem is the author of the fundamental philosophical work "Summa Technologiae", in which he anticipated the creation of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and also developed the ideas of human autoevolution, the creation of Simulacrum, artificial worlds, and many others. Lem's science fiction works explore philosophical themes through speculations on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Evitable Conflict
"The Evitable Conflict" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the June 1950 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction'' and subsequently appeared in the collections ''I, Robot'' (1950), ''The Complete Robot'' (1982), and ''Robot Visions'' (1990). It features the character Stephen Byerley from the earlier "Evidence". Plot summary Following on from the previous story 'Evidence,' in the year 2052, Stephen Byerley has been elected World Co-ordinator for a second term. Earth is divided into four geographical regions, each with a powerful supercomputer known as a Machine managing its economy. Byerley is concerned as the Machines have recently made some errors leading to economic inefficiency. Consulting with the four regional Vice Co-ordinators, he finds that several prominent individuals and companies associated with the anti-Machine "Society for Humanity" have been damaged by the Machines' apparent mistakes. Byerley believes that the Soci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Logic Named Joe
"A Logic Named Joe" is a science fiction short story by American writer Murray Leinster, first published in the March 1946 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction''. (The story appeared under Leinster's real name, Will F. Jenkins. That issue of ''Astounding'' also included a story under the Leinster pseudonym called "Adapter".) The story is particularly noteworthy as a prediction of massively networked personal computers and their drawbacks, written at a time when computing was in its infancy. Plot The story's narrator is a "logic repairman" nicknamed Ducky. A "logic" is a computer-like device described as looking "like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get". In the story, a logic (whom Ducky later calls Joe) develops some degree of sapience and ambition. Joe proceeds to switch around a few relays in "the tank" (one of a distributed set of central information repositories), and cross-correlate all information ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murray Leinster
Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975) was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Writing career Leinster was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of George B. Jenkins and Mary L. Jenkins. His father was an accountant. Although both parents were born in Virginia, the family lived in Manhattan in 1910, according to the 1910 Federal Census. A high school dropout, he nevertheless began a career as a freelance writer before World War I. He was two months short of his 20th birthday when his first story, "The Foreigner", appeared in the May 1916 issue of H. L. Mencken's literary magazine ''The Smart Set''. Over the next three years, Leinster published ten more stories in the magazine; in a September 2022 interview, Leinster's daughter stated that Mencken recommended ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Asimov
yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (1922–1928)American (1928–1992) , occupation = Writer, professor of biochemistry , years_active = 1939–1992 , genre = Science fiction (hard SF, social SF), mystery, popular science , subject = Popular science, science textbooks, essays, history, literary criticism , education = Columbia University ( BA, MA, PhD) , movement = Golden Age of Science Fiction , module = , signature = Isaac Asimov signature.svg Isaac Asimov ( ; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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