Something missing from the wikipedia article:

There used to be a convention among engineering students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois to name their student projects "HAL" because it was one letter off from IBM. "HAL Communications" was founded by alumni.

Arthur C Clarke claimed he put the "HAL" plant in Illinois only because he had a friend who was a professor there. He also claimed he didn't know about the student connection.

Good catch, thanks. I had forgotten about the HTML anchor fragment thingy.

Off-topic: are you into Gothic horror novels, or something like that, HeadlessChild? :)

It's cool to see all these creative usernames on HN. I get a giggle out of reading them, every now and then.