Adams’s 42
42
Recorded
Douglas Adams’s designed Answer
Deep Thought, receiving console. The designed Answer, filed. Cultural wink. Not evidence.
Adams chose 42 on purpose. Adams said so. It was a joke that had to be an ordinary smallish number.
What it supports
An authored literary use, later confirmed by Adams on Usenet (3 November 1993): “42 will do.” The number is designed, not derived.
What it does not
Not evidence that 42 is the universe’s secret. Adams explicitly dismissed binary, base-13 and monastic readings of his joke.
ExactnessAuthored use
Form42
Unitinteger
Strengthattested
When1979 / 1993
Source
Douglas Adams, Usenet alt.fan.douglas-adams, 3 Nov 1993- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)