verse

[Jonathan Lighter]

You mean UNIVAC didn't contain just one ginormous vacuum tube? Who knew?

JL

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 3:51 PM, Robin Hamilton <
robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
> Subject:      Re: verse
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: "Brian Hitchcock" <brianhi at SKECHERS.COM>
>
> > UNIVAC did not refer to vacuum tubes. It was an acronym for "Universal
> > Automatic Computer". Thus a "multivac" would be a multiversal automatic
> > computer?
>
> Well, yeah, I was pretty much wrong on this one re. Univac.  Shame, as it
> was rather a nice piece of folk-etymology.  Don't you just hate the Reality
> Principle sometimes?
>
> OTOH, given that when Asimov coined Multivac, computers were still ladies
> dressed in valves (or am I wrong on this too?), isn't it possible that
> there
> was a secondary phonaesthetic connotation around his coinage?  Thus a
> primary reference (back) to Versal Automatic Computer(s), with a secondary
> loading on the multiplicity of valves possessed by such a godlike machine?
>
> Perhaps, as Brian suggests, this is the case of an intrusion from some
> other
> Verse.  Transversal Semantic Contamination?
>
> Robin
>
> > "univac." The American HeritageR Abbreviations Dictionary, Third Edition.
> > Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. 21 Jan. 2011.
> >
> > <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/univac>
> > http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/univac
> >
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