[HN Gopher] Bertie the Brain
___________________________________________________________________
Bertie the Brain
Author : breppp
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-10-24 07:00 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| Syzygies wrote:
| A December 1956 cover feature article in Radio-Electronics
| magazine describes "Relay Moe" which plays tic tac toe with
| adjustable levels of skill. It used 90 relays.
|
| <https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%...>
|
| Here is the full text, for discussing with agents:
|
| https://archive.org/stream/RadioElectronics195701/Radio%20El...
|
| This is a subject dear to my heart. I'm a mathematician who
| routinely uses symmetry in counting problems. As a kid I remember
| writing out a tic tac toe game tree in about ten pages. I must
| have used symmetry, and I must have only mapped a winning
| strategy, not all 765 game states up to symmetry.
|
| So my first reaction to now reading that Bertie the Brain used
| "addition tubes" was "Really? Can't you do that with relays?" And
| the reality is that Bertie the Brain was a solution looking for a
| problem, a demo project for these tubes, not an attempt at the
| simplest way to implement such a machine.
|
| Still, looking at the numbers, I'm impressed that Relay Moe
| managed multiple levels of game play using only 90 relays. The
| design exploited symmetry.
| croes wrote:
| Additron not addition.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > The Additron was an electron tube designed by Dr. Josef
| Kates, circa 1950, to replace the several individual electron
| tubes and support components required to perform the function
| of a single bit digital full adder.
|
| TIL
| ck2 wrote:
| the mechanical chess computer was even more impressive imho
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ajedrecista
|
| early 1900s, that's incredible
|
| the first electronic computer playing chess was almost 50 years
| away
| Sharlin wrote:
| Note that it only played a single endgame scenario consisting
| of three pieces.
| rob74 wrote:
| Still more difficult than Tic-Tac-Toe...
| Sharlin wrote:
| Granted.
| taneq wrote:
| What, no small-statured chess mastermind hidden in there? :D
| marshavoidance wrote:
| I miss the days when video games were used to showcase technical
| advances.
|
| "Kates built the game to showcase his additron tube, a miniature
| version of the vacuum tube, though the transistor overtook it in
| computer development shortly thereafter."
| embedding-shape wrote:
| They sort of still are (Witcher 4 being used to showcase new UE
| features and software+hardware optimizations is just one
| example), but we're getting close to the point where we cannot
| really add more details and realism to video games and they
| still don't really hammer the hardware. Seems ML is the new
| showcase if anything :)
| vntok wrote:
| > but we're getting close to the point where we cannot really
| add more details and realism to video games
|
| Lots of human senses aren't tackled by video games yet.
| Smell, taste, balance, cardioception, proprioception, pain,
| temperature, pressure are all missing. Where are the
| immersive tanks or piezzoelectric coveralls that stimulate
| all of our senses coherently? I bet adding those would hammer
| the hardware.
| aethrum wrote:
| Man Canada used to be so impressive. We need to get back there
| ge96 wrote:
| RIP Avro Arrow
| srcreigh wrote:
| 2014 interview with the creator:
| https://spacing.ca/toronto/2014/08/13/meet-bertie-brain-worl...
| whycome wrote:
| > "If the solid-state revolution had started ten years later, I
| would have been a billionaire," he says. "Everybody would have
| used Additrons instead of these big circuits."
|
| I feel like this is the sentiment on HN for so many startup
| projects that seem adjacent to other innovations
| satiated_grue wrote:
| On the tic tac toe topic, MENACE is just startlingly cool:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_...
| moralestapia wrote:
| Toronto leading AI since the 50s woo!
| NoSalt wrote:
| So ... Joshua was the next evolution of Bertie?
| krustyburger wrote:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=UOAdGjj-hIg
| arionmiles wrote:
| As I was reading through this, I came to the part that mentions
| the cathode-ray tube amusement device and the words instantly
| unlocked a long forgotten memory I had as a child reading DK
| illustrated books on science and tech (I can't recall what the
| book was called) and it's where I learnt about it being the first
| video game ever.
|
| Only tangentially related to this article but it took me back!
| svat wrote:
| The article says this was for the 1950 Canadian National
| Exhibition, and it appears that a high-schooler Donald Knuth got
| to see one such machine in Chicago (possibly on a school trip; he
| grew up in Milwaukee) long before his first encounter with a
| computer, as documented in TAOCP vol 4A:
|
| > This setup is based on an exhibit from the early 1950s at the
| Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where the author was
| first introduced to the magic of switching circuits. The machine
| in Chicago, designed by researchers at Bell Telephone
| Laboratories, allowed me to go first; yet I soon discovered there
| was no way to defeat it. Therefore I decided to move as stupidly
| as possible, hoping that the designers had not anticipated such
| bizarre behavior. In fact I allowed the machine to reach a
| position where it had two winning moves; and it seized both of
| them! Moving twice is of course a flagrant violation of the
| rules, so I had won a moral victory even though the machine had
| announced that I had lost.
|
| Later, a program for playing tic-tac-toe was one of the first
| programs he wrote, after he entered college and discovered
| computers. (He also quotes Charles Babbage!
| https://research.swtch.com/tictactoe)
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| SF author Fred Saberhagen used an "automated" tic-tac-toe in one
| of the first Berserker (intelligent machines bent on wiping out
| organic life) stories.
|
| The protagonist was a scout spaceship pilot, who for plot reasons
| had to simulate being alert in communication with a Berserker
| that could kill him if it determined he wasn't.
|
| If memory serves, he devised some sort of branch elimination
| algorithm using matchsticks, so that his tic-tac-toe games
| improved with iteration...
|
| That was 1963:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(novel_series)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-31 23:01 UTC)