Billiard Ball Computer
A billiard-ball computer, also known as a conservative logic circuit, is an idealized model of a reversible mechanical computer based on Newtonian dynamics, proposed in 1982 by Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli. Instead of using electronic signals like a conventional computer, it relies on the motion of spherical billiard balls in a friction-free environment made of buffers against which the balls bounce perfectly. It was devised to investigate the relation between computation and reversible processes in physics.
Read more about Billiard Ball Computer: Simulating Circuits With Billiard Balls, Simulating Billiard Balls in Other Models of Computation
Famous quotes containing the words ball and/or computer:
“Any balance we achieve between adult and parental identities, between childrens and our own needs, works only for a timebecause, as one father says, Its a new ball game just about every week. So we are always in the process of learning to be parents.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion, Dennie, and Palmer Wolf. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Womens Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)
“The archetype of all humans, their ideal image, is the computer, once it has liberated itself from its creator, man. The computer is the essence of the human being. In the computer, man reaches his completion.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (19211990)