[game_preservation] Nimatron: computer or electromechanical?

[Andrew Armstrong]

I'm not too clear on where the one ends and other begins, although I 
would have thought a fully hardware solution to a problem which involves 
no software would be electromechanical, since it actually does no 
computing as such.

Then again, since all software can be boiled down to the basic 
circuitry, who am I to say? Perhaps computers are just a subset of 
electromechanical things? Perhaps this computes enough output to 
qualify? (I mean, do Chess machines do much more?)

I couldn't view the piccies because it requires for some 
who-let-the-government-really-use-that-sigh Quicktime, might check it 
out on my Mac sometime perhaps. That shouldn't influence my decision 
though considering I won't understand circuit diagrams and pictures just 
are not related to the definition of computer versus electromechanical I 
think.

Andrew

On 18/05/2010 00:07, Devin Monnens wrote:

> 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 <http://www.deserthat.com>

>

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

>

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