Editing Multivac (section)

== Description ==
Like most of the technologies Asimov describes in his fiction, Multivac's exact specifications vary among appearances. In all cases, it is a government-run computer that answers questions posed using natural language,<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Halbert|first=Martin|date=1992|title=Recursive Reviews|url=https://uh-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/10657/5872/Halbert_1992_ArtificialIntelligenceLibrariesReviewV3N2.pdf?sequence=1|journal=The Public-Access Computer Systems Review|volume=3|pages=21–28}}</ref> and it is usually buried deep underground for security purposes. According to his autobiography ''[[In Memory Yet Green]]'', Asimov coined the name in imitation of [[UNIVAC I|UNIVAC]], an early [[mainframe computer]]. Asimov had assumed the name "Univac" denoted a computer with a single [[vacuum tube]] (it actually is an acronym for "Universal Automatic Computer"), and on the basis that a computer with many such tubes would be more powerful, called his fictional  computer "Multivac".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Asimov|first1=Isaac|title=In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954|date=1979|publisher=Doubleday|isbn=9780385136792 |page=663|oclc=4491369|quote=Univac is an acronym for 'Universal Automatic Computer' but I somehow got it into my head, without thinking, that it meant 'uni-vac', or 'one vacuum tube.'  From then on, I wrote a series of stories featuring a giant computer I called 'Multivac.'}}</ref>  His later short story "[[The Last Question]]", however, expands the ''AC'' suffix to be "analog computer". However, Asimov never settles on a particular size for the computer (except for mentioning it is very large)<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=May |first=Andrew |title=Rockets and Ray Guns : the Sci-Fi Science of the Cold War |date=2018|isbn=978-3-319-89830-8|oclc=1038746131}}</ref><sup>:86</sup> or the supporting facilities around it. In the short story "[[Franchise (short story)|Franchise]]" it is described as half a mile long (~800 meters) and three stories high, at least as far as the general public knows, while "[[All the Troubles of the World]]" states it fills all of Washington D.C.. There are frequent mentions of corridors and people inside Multivac. Unlike the [[artificial intelligence]]s portrayed in his [[Robot series (Asimov)|''Robot'' series]], Multivac's early interface is mechanized and impersonal, consisting of complex command consoles few humans can operate.<ref name=":2" /> In "[[The Last Question]]", Multivac is shown as having a life of many thousands of years, growing ever more enormous with each section of the story, which can explain its different reported sizes as occurring further down the internal timeline of the overarching story.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Computer sciences|date=2002|publisher=Macmillan Reference|isbn=9780028655697|editor=Flynn, Roger R. |oclc=671558424}}</ref><sup>:20</sup>