Conway's "Game of Life" ... when invented?

From: Buck Savage <hhacker_at_home.com>
Date: Mon Jul 26 23:07:26 1999

-----Original Message-----
From: KENNETH S HALEY <haleyk_at_okstate.edu>
>
>As a finale, self-replicating CA structures were invented by a guy in a
>LANL working group (see 'artifical life') with an Apple.
>

Wrong! Christopher Langton (who organised the first Artificial Life
Conference, September, 1987, Los Alamos National Laboratory) invented a
simple example of a self-replicating structure for a cellular automata
system based not too loosely upon the work of E. F. Codd. The reference
is a book entitled Celluar Automata. The work of von Neumann is collected
in a volume by Arthur Burks entitled Essays on Cellular Automata.

Codd's CA has eight states and the neighborhood function of von Neumann.
It has the curious characteristic of providing a model of brain cell
function, i.e. neurons.

William R. Buckley
Received on Mon Jul 26 1999 - 23:07:26 BST