Conway's Game of Life: Part 5 (Gosper's Gilder Gun - A Fantastic Tale of Discovery)

This video relates the story of the discovery by MIT's Bill Gosper of a Glider Gun for the cellular automata called Conway's Game of Life. Some alternative birth and death rules are explored using the R-Pentomino configuration to illustrate why John Conway eventually settled on his B3S23 rules (notation explained in video). The most famous Glider in history is introduced (observed by the 'blinker watcher' Richard Guy in 1970). John von Neumann's earlier work on self-reproducing machines using cellular automata inspired Conway's research which resulted in his Scientific American Mathematical Games article on the Game of Life. The video explains how this article and its $50 challenge led to MIT's Bill Gosper's eventual discovery of his glider Gun. He worked in Marvin Minsky's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and had access to a PDP-6, a million dollar computer.
The steps in the construction of the Gun are illustrated. He used two Queen Bee Shuttles to perform countless experiments before finally discovering the Gun. The video demonstrates some of these experiments.
Gosper's telegram to Martin Gardner announcing the discovery is discussed in some detail with an illustration of the coordinate description that he used. His mistake is discovered and corrected.
Finally an array of four Glider Guns arranged in each possible orientation is displayed as a visually stunning finale to the video.
Key terms: Game of Life, John Conway, Bill Gosper, Cambridge University, MIT, Marvin Minsky, Artificial Intelligence, Martin Gardner, Scientific American, Mathematical Games, R-pentomino, Gilder, Glider Gun, Block, Beehive, Queen Bee Shuttle, Richard Guy John von Neumann, Self-reproducing machines.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:15 Historical context.
1:20 Alternative rules: examples
3:12 The R-Pentomino story
4:07 First ever sighting of a Glider
6:05 Final fate of the R-Pentomino
6:37 Influence of John Von Neumann
7:25 Using streams of Gliders
7:45 Help from Martin Gardiner
8:15 MIT, Minsky, PDP6 and Bill Gosper
9:03 Gosper's search
9:43 Investigating the Queen Bee
11:11 The Queen Bee Shuttle
11:41 Gosper's stroke of Genius
15:02 The Glider Gun is Discovered!
16:33 Telegram to Martin Gardiner
17:35 A mistake revealed
19:32 A 4-Glider-Gun Display
20:40 End Links
Other videos in the series are:
Conway's Game of Life: Part 1 (a gentle introduction / tutorial / explanation)
https://youtu.be/484FWxvO-Ro
Conway's Game of Life: Part 2 (Gliders, Crashes & Still Life)
https://youtu.be/gIRBuHkVcLc
Conway's Game of Life: Part 3 (Order from Chaos)
https://youtu.be/ASj3gDEirqY
Conway's Game of Life: Part 4 (Gliders, Spaceships and the Speed of Light)
https://youtu.be/rIEM1-pAwTI
Conway's Game of Life: Part 6 (A Chronology of Spaceship Discoveries - Glider, LWSS, 25P3H1V0, etc)
https://youtu.be/5yLcsaewxJQ