Friday, September 3, 2021

A Replica of the HAL 9000 Punch Card

In "2001: A Space Odyssey" (at about 1h10), HAL 9000 just predicted the 100% failure of the AE-35 unit within the next 72 hours. To discuss this with Frank Poole, Dave Bowman asks HAL to provide a hard copy - and we see the punch card emerging on the left side.


Here are two close-ups.

 

That's not good enough for making a replica. And it seems that no further details about this punch card are known, from the movie and/or it's making-of. 
But internet searches give some results:
  • Master Replicas has produced replicas of these punch cards which are sold at toynk.com and at amazon.com for $34 (for a set of five cards). They say these are officially licensed from Warner Bros.
  • At yourprops.com, there are two users who present identical punch cards, which differ somehow from the Master Replica version (here and here).

I decided to base my version on the Master Replica version.

With the open-source desktop publishing software Scribus, I proceed as follows:

  • The card itself is supposed to be 3" x 5", so I make a file of 4" x 6" (which can be printed e.g. at Walgreens on 4" x 6" photo paper). 
  • The HAL 9000 logo is made using the font "GrotesqueNo9T" which is manually outlined in Scribus with 2.5% linewidth, at 31pt.
  • For the computer/typewriter font, I am using Artisan12 at 7pt. 
  • I do not have a paper punch for the rectangular holes, so I print those as grey fields.

And here is my result: 


It will be displayed next to my HAL 9000 computer, the Instructions for the Zero-Gravity Toilet, and the 2001 Food Trays.