Douglas Adams showed his creativity in both science and electronics.
There are books-as-gadgets, poetry-appreciation-chairs, babel-fishes, doors-with-life, speaking-computers and the list goes on and on...
As per Hitchhiker's Guide, What is Earth?
Earth
Mostly Harmless.Maybe...
Located in ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.
Although the primitive ape-descended denizens of this planet did not realize it, the Earth was designed by a supercomputer called Deep Thought, and was built by the Magratheans. Slartibartfast won an award for his fjords on the coast of Norway.
The Earth was actually a computer so vast that organic life became part of it's matrix.
It was destroyed by the Vogons five minutes before the completion of its program.
Some more excerpts...
Improbability Drive
The Infinite Improbability Drive simultaneously places a starship at every conceivable point in the universe, thereby eliminating all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. It uses vast amounts of improbability, and many silly things happen in its wake.
Logic behind Improbability Drive
The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits is well understood. But scientists claim that it is virtually imposible to produce a machine that could generate the infinite improbability field that could flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars.
If such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all we need to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!
Bethselamin
A fabulously beautiful planet, Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative eroision by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.
Thumb, The
A short squat black rod, smooth and matte with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end. The Thumb is used by Hitchhikers throughout the Galaxy to flag down passing starships. Half the electronic engineers in the galaxy are constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming the signals generated by the Thumb, while the other half are constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming the jamming signals.
Babel Fish
The Babel Fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
The Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
MagratheaMagrathea is a myth, a faery story! It's what parents tell their children about at night when they want them to grow up to become economists!
People in Magrathea are sleeping and they will continue to do that till galaxy's economy reaches a stage that they would like. So, their computers are linked to galaxy's stock prices.
Happy Hitchhiking :)
Read more at
http://hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/
http://hhgproject.org/index.html
...
