Deep Thought was a supercomputer created by a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings that was programmed to calculate the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. It designed the other supercomputer, Earth, which was built by the Magratheans. When it was first switched on, it deduced the Cartesian Principle ("I think, therefore I am") and income tax before being switched off again.
Two programmers named Lunkwill and Fook were chosen to propose the Ultimate Question to Deep Thought on the day of the Great On-Turning. Before accepting its assignment, Deep Thought advised the programmers that there it would be surpassed in the future by another computer. As to answering the Magratheans' question, Deep Thought decided that it would "have to think about it", telling the programmers that it would take the computer 7.5 million years to calculate the answer to their Ultimate Question.
7.5 million years later, the descendants of Lunkwill and Fook — Loonquawl and Phouchg — presided over the Day of the Answer, and were chosen to receive the answer to the Ultimate Question. Deep Thought revealed that the Ultimate Answer was 42. When the Magratheans evinced their dismay that 42 was the answer for which they had waited millions of years, Deep Thought chided them for not understanding what the question was. The hapless programmers were further dismayed to hear that Deep Thought was incapable of determining what the question was. Instead, the computer designed its successor, the superior computer it had hinted at millions of years earlier. Deep Thought announced that the new machine would be so large, it would resemble a planet, and be of such complexity that organic life would become part of its operating matrix. The Magratheans would evolve into mice and descend to the planet to operate its 10 million-year-long program, and that new machine would be known as the Earth.
Nearly 10 million years later, just five minutes before it could reach The Question, a Vogon Constructor Fleet destroyed Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
According to the film, Deep Thought also designed the Point of View gun as a commission from the Intergalactic Consortium of Angry Housewives. In the film, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford Prefect and Trillian reach Deep Thought's plane of existence and find that it spent the 10 million years since the Earth's creation "watching telly", and is apathetic to Earth's destruction. When prompted, it provides them access to the chamber containing the Point of View gun, which they had been sent to collect as part of a bargain with Humma Kavula.
Deep Thought, as seen in the 1980 BBC TV series.
Appearances[]
Deep Thought appeared or was mentioned in: