Lifeline

A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FOR ENTHUSIASTS OF JOHN CONWAY'S GAME OF LIFE

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Lifeline was a newsletter for "enthusiasts of John Horton Conway's game of Life", first edited and published by Robert Wainwright. It was published quarterly, the first issue being in March 1971, and ran for twelve issues. The original newsletter was typewritten and the sheets were stapled together. The newsletter itself followed an enthusiastic response to Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American (October 1970).

Summary of the issues

Volume 1 MARCH 1971

8 pages

• N-ominoes (Polyomino)
• A classification system for Life 'Objects'
• Colliding spaceships
• Subclasses of Class II - Oscillators
• Known Class V (Unstable, predictable) object Life histories

Volume 2 JUNE 1971

18 pages

• Fates of the last four unknown heptominoes
• An expanded classification system for finite Life objects
• Examples for each objects class
• Coming events
• A comprehensive file of information generated by life experimenters
• Boltwood's Life program in FORTRAN

Volume 3 SEPTEMBER 1971

32 pages

• Smallest still life objects : 4 to 9 cells
• The variety of flip-flop symmetry
• Shuttles, flottillae, glider guns, puffer trains
• The Breeder (photographed on page 1)
• Methuselahs' census
• Spaceship factories
• Acorn data - generations, contents of the final population ('oak tree')

Wicks and agars

• A classification system for 'wicks' (one-dimensionally infinite objects)
• Illusion of motion' (IoM)
• A summary of fuses
• A classification system for 'agars' (two-dimensionally infinite objects)
• The smallest area that should contain a Garden of Eden (GoE) pattern
• Coming events

Volume 4 DECEMBER 1971

12 pages

• Publisher R. T. Wainwright willing to be an antecessor
• The incredible 'Switch engine'
• Diagonal puffer train
• Methuselah census
• 'Natural pentadec'(athlon)
• Toroidal surface and variations to Conway's basic rules
• Coming events
• Lifefile - Thompson's codex system for known Life objects

Volume 5 SEPTEMBER 1972

7 pages

• New discoveries sent in by 'Buckinghams Combine'
• Summary of Conway' Life rules
• HOW TO PLAY LIFE
• Class E, Evolutionaries, Exercises, Et cetera . . .
• Class I, Still Lifes and Stable Forms . . .
• Class II, Oscillators . . .
• Reader Article: The Period 12 'Line·Block' Oscillator by Edward Fitzgerald, David Lawson, and Tad Marshall of Irvington, N.Y.
• Excursions Into Other Universes . . .
• Answers to Reader Exercises
• COMING EVENTS
• RANDOM BITS (Thompson has tracked 19,000+ patterns, 71 different two-glider collisions, ...)
• LIFELINE EDITORIAL BOARD
• LIFE SAVER survey

Volume 6 OCTOBER 1972

Page 1	Two conjectures by JHC: Grandfather Problem and Unique Father Problem
Page 2	Class E, Evolutionaries, Exercises, Et cetera . . . 'LIFEXPLANATIONS' by Peter Raynham Reader Briefs ... • Mark Horton on a figure conservatively interacting • Christopher Scussel on the collision of a glider and a lightweight spaceship • Lee H. Skinner on still lifes
Page 3	Class II, Oscillators . . . Lifeobservation by Glenn Puro regarding a UFO formation Reader Reply regarding the 'Line-Block' Oscillator by Harry J. Riley
Page 4	Lifecomics by Richard Holmes and Traw Excursions Into the Universe of '3-4' Life . . . Lifequote Editor's Errors_and Embarrassment . . .
Page 5	Moore-Myhill criterion for existance of Garden of Eden configurations. (Reader Article by Frank Bernhart)
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8	Class III, Spaceships and Pure Glider Generators . . . Lifequote Lifecomic by Michael Moore Coming Events

Scans of all Lifeline newsletters

The Lifeline project includes page images of the remaining Lifeline newsletters that have not yet been transcribed into text format.

External links

• Lifeline at the Life Lexicon