>>452
Asperger was doing research in the 1930's. Rain Man came out in 1988, the year after TNG first aired. And even if autism had never been discovered, it still existed, and there's a very good chance that the people involved in making Star Trek had met autistic people in the past -- I mean, think about who watches Star Trek. Even without thinking the word "autistic," you can write a character based on a specific kind of intelligent loser who has trouble understanding people. Either that or Data was based on the real life robots that use overly precise language and actually exist.