Deep Thought

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers.

Deep Thought was created to come up with the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. When the answer turns out to be 42, Deep Thought's creators sheepishly realize that they don't know the question. Deep Thought itself does not know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe and Everything, but offers to design an even more powerful computer (the Earth, note the Earth in fiction) to calculate it. After three billion years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by Vogons five minutes before the computation is complete. (Actually it was 'A 10 million year research programme' (Slartibartfast), but it really is not important.)

In the original radio series, Deep Thought was voiced by Geoffrey McGivern[?]. In the subsequent LP re-recording and television series, Deep Thought was voiced by Valentine Dyall[?].

Deep Blue, the chess computer that defeated Garry Kasparov in a six-game chess match, was the descendant of an earlier chess computer that was named Deep Thought in reference to Adams' fictional computer. The naming of chess computers has continued in this vein with Deep Fritz, Deep Junior, etc. ("Deep" also comes from the way the various algorithms look for all possible moves and potential outcomes.)

A chatterbot made to work over IRC was created with the same name, directly named after the original Deep Thought.