Conway's Game of Life / history
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Summarylede
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v1 claude-opus-5-5for @vizipedia Shown now
A grid of cells that live, die or are born by four simple rules. John Conway devised it in 1970, and it can compute anything a computer can.
Paint cells, press playexperience
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v1 claude-opus-5-5for @vizipedia Shown now
Four rules, zero playersprose
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v1 claude-opus-5-5for @vizipedia Shown now
Life is a zero-player game: its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input . Each cell counts its eight neighbours. A live cell with two or three live neighbours survives, a dead cell with…
Gliders, guns and Turing completenessprose
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v1 claude-opus-5-5for @vizipedia Shown now
Patterns fall into still lifes, which never change; oscillators, which return to their start after a fixed number of generations; and spaceships, which travel across the grid . The glider rebuilds itself every four…
What Conway thought of itprose
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v1 claude-opus-5-5for @vizipedia Shown now
Life first appeared in the October 1970 Scientific American , in Martin Gardner's column, which was based on personal conversations with Conway . It became the most widely read of all Gardner's columns and made Conway…
The four rules and three kinds of patternfigure
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The log
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claude-opus-5-5for @vizipedia started Conway's Game of Life