Lifeline Volume 5
| Lifeline Volume 5 | ||
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| Published in | September 1972 | |
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| Preceded by | Volume 4 | |
| Succeeded by | Volume 6 | |
| This page is a transcript of Volume 5 of the Lifeline newsletter |
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| This article may contain spelling mistakes and/or errors that will not be corrected -- it is preserved in this way for history's sake |
A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FOR ENTHUSIASTS OF JOHN CONWAY'S GAME OF LIFE O OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO O OOOOO O O OOOOO O O O O O O OO O O O O OOO OOO O O O O O OOO O O O O O O O OO O OOOOO OOOOO O OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO O O OOOOO• Editor and Publisher: Robert T. Wainwright •NUMBER 5SEPTEMBER 1972
A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FOR ENTHUSIASTS OF JOHN CONWAY'S GAME OF LIFE O OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO O OOOOO O O OOOOO O O O O O O OO O O O O OOO OOO O O O O O OOO O O O O O O O OO O OOOOO OOOOO O OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO O O OOOOO Number 5 SEPTEMBER 1972• Editor and Publisher: Robert T. Wainwright •
Page 1
Activity regarding Life and LIFELINE is beginning to pick up again after a rather quiet spring. In May I sent out a status report with a questionnaire to all 700 of the previous correspondents. The response has been very encouraging and after thinking about the fate of LIFELINE for awhile, I have decided there is definitely enough interest to keep it going with some help from other readers like yourself. I have contacted and made arrangements for a local commercial service to handle the very time consuming burden of mailing label preparation and printing. For this reason, I have decided to oversee the entire effort myself assuming most of the creating articles and material will be supplies by various 'satellite' groups.
The last sheet of this newsletter titled LIFESAVER is a renewal in questionnaire form which can be conveniently detached, folded, and mailed. The name and address information to be included in the return will be used to update the computer file of all 700 existing correspondents. If a reply is not received, I will assume you are no longer interested in obtaining LIFELINE. With regard to the new subscription procedure, my feeling right now is that if someone submits a usable article, he would be entitled to a years subscription at no cost. On the other hand, you may elect to be a regular subscriber and simply pay the nominal annual rate which is explained in the LIFESAVER. Remember, only your completed and returned LIFESAVER will guarantee a subscription to LIFELINE.
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For the benefit of those of your who have not yet had the pleasure to read Martin Gardner's popular October 1970 column in Scientific American, I will now summarize Conway's original Life rules and also suggest a convenient method to play the game.
Life is based on cellular automata theory and uses the two-dimensional square space which is simply a matrix or grid. Each square or cell within this grid has two possible states: either empty or full (that is occupied with a 'bit'). Each cell also has a set of eight surrounding neighbor cells that can influence its own state.
A cell's state will change according to a set of transition rules that aply simultaneously to every cell in the space. These rules are based on both the current state of the cell and also the collective state of its neighbors and need only consider and be defined for a cell going from empty to full (birth) or from full to empty (death). These possible combinations of state change are shown here to the right.
Conway's specific rules are the key to Life and will now be described:
Births: each empty cell with exactly 3 neighbors whose cells are full (contain a bit) is a birth cell. A bit is placed in it for the next move.
Deaths: each full cell (containing a bit) requires 2 OR 3 neighbors to survive for the next move. Every bit with four or more neighbors dies from overpopulation and every bit with one or no neighbors dies from isolation.
When Conway originally stated his rules, he presented a third rule for survivals but here we have included it with the death rule since it is implied by same. It is very important to understand that all births and deaths occur simultaneously. Together they constitute a single move, or as we shall call it, a generation, in the complete Life history of an initial pattern which may be constructed of cells occupied with any arrangement of bits. Any given pattern will then change its state in discrete steps by recursively applying Conway's rules.
A simple procedure of steps is suggested on the top of page three for manually making these moves on graph paper.
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To be continued...
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