God is the hot chick.
Well, apparently, I can’t resist such a challenge.
I assume the monks don’t need 12-point type. Using 8-point type (as small as Word would let me), I got about 120 characters on a line with margins. My very rough estimate just now is that 6 -point type and tiny margins would give about 200 characters per line (on 8 1/2" x 11"). I’ll guesstimate 200 lines per page. Professionals, feel free to correct this, and give your own estimate for maximum number of legible characters on a standard page.
Assuming an average of 10 characters per name, that’s 4,000 names per page. To print all 9 billion names, that’s 2,250,000 pages (single sided).
Which is a lot of pages, but not inconceivable quantities: Staple’s web site sells pallets of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, each 40 cases at 5,000 sheets per case. So all 9 billion names could be printed on 12 pallets of paper. Which is probably more than one C3 flight, but I assume less than ten, so OK.
If the monks are super-organized, with a couple-three teams working in parallel, I figure they could paste up one page per second across the three teams. With around-the-clock shifts (they’re monks; that’s what they’re trained for), they could paste everything up in just barely over 26 days.
Now, that’s not allowing for downtime, leaving room on the pages for binding, etc., but I assume smaller type is possible, too. So all in all, we’re in the right ballpark to fit the story.
Now, finding a printer with a duty-cycle of two million pages might be tricky. But if this monastery is able to afford a mainframe computer, and flying it and the field technicians to Tibet, I guess they can afford a few backup printers, too.
Here is the mainframe’s physical installation manual, if someone wants to dig into it. I don’t know exactly which bits they would need to install, what if anything could be run remotely, what the cooling requirements would be in Tibet, etc. 50 kW sounds like the right order of magnitude, but who knows: that is why Clarke described a fictional computer that happened to meet the monks’ requirements.
An IBM 1403 Model N1 consumed 1.1kW and could print 1100 lines/minute in 132 columns. Let’s assume a dozen potential names per line, an average of 1000 lines per minute, and 20 hours per day (as told in the story) of operation. After 100 days, that is well over a billion names per printer. Presumably their algorithm has a good ratio of hits per potential name generated.
I wonder more about how much work they had to do turning the printouts into books, as we are told the monks did it by hand and “carefully,” separating the individual sheets of paper along the perforations and pasting them into books. Then again, the story says it is game over as soon as the last name comes out of the printer.
I still think nothing in the story sounds outrageous, helped by the fact most details are kept deliberately vague (we don’t even know what year it is, only that it is before 2060), but maybe we missed something.
In the early- or mid-1970’s IBM had chain printers that passed paper so fast it amazed that it didn’t break. The custom chain would have just nine characters so 15 instances each, and could print 15 lines per chain revolution. About the same time, IBM announced a laser printer that did 20,000 lines (or over 200,000 words) per minute, well above your needed speed.
And assuming a name is allowed up to one space (with a double space used to separate names), you get all nine billion with only ten characters.
My fanwanky explanation for this is that the stars were never really there–the universe, as seen from Earth, was an elaborate illusion.
However, I admit that’s a very un-Clarke-ish idea; if he were still around and we asked him, I suspect he’d say that he fudged things for the sake of a good ending.
It wasn’t just the stars disappearing but everything. That would include the light the stars emitted already in transit towards earth.
The sun presumably disappeared too. Things were probably getting a little crazy in the western hemisphere while those characters were riding their mountain ponies to the airfield.