seaQuest's Computer Genius
Before boarding seaQuest, Lucas invented the "vocorder", a communications device that translates the clicks and squeals of dolphins into English (and vice-versa). However, the program was not complete. As a result, Darwin, the seaQuest's resident dolphin, could speak no more than approximately 125 words of English.
Along with Lieutenant Commander Katherine Hitchcock, Lucas designed a new, one-person submarine, which he called the Stinger. Although Hitchcock wanted to call it the Gazelle, Lucas was adamant about calling it the Stinger, claiming that if he called it the Gazelle, he would get beaten up.
Along with Dr. Kristin Westphalen, Lucas worked with Darwin and the vocorder in an attempt to teach the dolphin more words and to better understand the psychology of the dolphin mind.
Read more about this topic: Lucas Wolenczak
Famous quotes containing the words computer and/or genius:
“What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)
“If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)