Life
| Filename | life-101.hqx |
|---|---|
| Size | 49.4 KB (50593 bytes) |
| Downloads | 9 |
Life is Bill Atkinson's 1984 Macintosh implementation of John Conway's Game of Life, the classic cellular automaton in which a grid of cells is born, survives or dies according to a handful of simple rules. Released as version 1.0, it is one of the earliest pieces of recreational mathematics software written for the original Macintosh hardware.
The simulation
The board is a two-dimensional grid of cells, each either alive or dead. At every generation, a cell with two or three live neighbors survives, a dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes alive, and all others die. From these rules emerge gliders, oscillators, still lifes and far more elaborate patterns.
About the author
Bill Atkinson is best known as the author of QuickDraw, MacPaint and HyperCard. His Life application is a compact showcase of QuickDraw on early Macs, taking advantage of the crisp 1-bit display to render generations cleanly and quickly.
System requirements
The application targets a 68k Macintosh running System 1 through System 6.x, which makes it ideal material for Mini vMac and other early-Mac emulators when run on modern hardware.
Background
Conway introduced the Game of Life in 1970 in Scientific American. Atkinson's port arrived just months after the Macintosh's debut and helped popularize cellular automata among a new generation of personal-computer hobbyists.
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