[game_preservation] Nimatron: computer or electromechanical?

[Devin Monnens]

Another interesting device from the footnotes of history:

A machine called Nimatron was designed by Edward Condon (et al) in 1939-40
for the Westinghouse booth at the New York World's Fair. It was played by
over 50,000 people. It could play a perfect game of Nim (the game had been
solved by that point) but was purposefully disabled to allow for 16 winning
strategies. The game was patented with a description "any electrical means
of representing a number as the sum of integral multiples of powers of
another number", which Condon states is "representing numbers digitally in a
computing circuit".

http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4997_2.html

Here is the patent<http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=8&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PALL&s1=2,215,544&OS=2,215,544&RS=2,215,544>with
the diagrams (2,215,544,
Sept 24, 1940).


My question is was this device a computer or electromechanical?

-Devin

-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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