A the very dawn of electronic computing machinery, 1948, the Rand Corporation built an electronic machine with which to generate the contents of a book, titledgOne Million Random Digits and 100,000 Normal Deviates. The book is a large mathematical table, rigorously proven, perversely or hilariously, to contain absolutely no information -- an anti-table. Instructions for its use read like a card trick. It contains random digits from an anti-oracle, an electronic device that produced noise. Rand's machine was a difficult challenge for the time, but the "high quality" random numbers were sorely needed for theoretical work on nuclear bombs, amongst other things.
My Atomic Number Generator, and the Rocks and Code installation it was designed for, directly reference that event; what was done, why, and what it means today. It's a starting point for me to look at some fundamental limits of knowledge, amongst other things that will unfold later.
In 2009-2010 I completed a machine that emulated the algorithms of the original Rand machine, beginning with the sketchy information on the tables' production outlined in the book. That beginning led to some research on the Rand project which I laid out in reasonable detail in my MFA thesis, also called Rocks and Code.
(In 2011 continuing research and thought has taken the larger project -- Rocks and Code -- further along a divergent path; my Gas Tube Noise Generator begins with Rand's actual 1948 electronic design and deals with some fundamental exploration of scientific objectivity and human subjectivity (or is that fallibility).)
This first machine is based upon radioactive decay of natural uranium as the source of randomness. The numbers so generated are uttered vocally (rendering them umm let's say less than useful).
That is not however what Rand used for their randomness source; though very well known at the time as an excellent and easy source for randomness, Rand instead chose a more difficult and troublesome randomness source, a gas thyratron electron tube. Why this more complex choice?
And why the need for random numbers in the first place? For post-war development of atomic ("nuclear") bombs; for hydrodynamic simulations. To make a long story short, 1948 was only two short years after the horrific bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even Americans who thought it necessary do so were appalled by the effects. My research sort-of convinced me that Rand wanted no association with the destruction, and chose the "cleaner" albeit more technically difficult path. I have no way to verify this; Rand recorded little information on this project, and I've read all that is known to exist on the matter. Since my goal is artistic and not historical accuracy I am fine running with this assumption to see where it leads me, even if just my own amusement..
At this writing (November 2011) the installation has been set up only once; there is no documentation of it. In addition to the information on this page there is a Youtube video showing the Atomic Number Generator in a small, standalone context, and this brief conceptual movie of no great import.
I am now developing a noise source using what I am fairly certain was Rand's noise source -- a 6D4 argon gas thyratron. In my thesis research I found what I think is the root development of the thyratron as noise source ( PDF article, Cobine, Curry 1947). A condensation of that design can be found in the Sylvania tube databook.
My noise source will emulate that, but will have... extended features, mainly outside human influence. More on this as it develops (don't hold your breath).
The random behaviors contained in uranium rock has it's own set of cultural side effects, but so does the gas thyratron, in it's own way. Here, contained within a tiny volume, between metal electrodes inside a glass envelope containing rarefied argon gas, is a tiny plasma of electrons imbued with a fundamental meaning to western [scientific] culture: an oracle of absolute unpredictability.
The new machine will start with a re-creation of the Rand noise source, a 6D4 miniature gas thyratron. It will end up ... extended in function, to include undue human influence over the electron plasma. At the moment it's just a test jig, sans magnets, but it produces the noise that thyratrons make as a side effect of normal operation. I did poke it manually with a magnet and the principle is clearly observable. I need to make the support electronics still, but proof-of-concept is there.
Magnet not mounted yet.
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There is an oscillation visible in the display, 350KHz - 500KHz, and I've determined that it's caused by inadvertent load capacitance in the leads and 'scope probe, both easily fixed or at least minimized. And since it is no longer 1948 I can fix remaining issues easily.
The intertwined developments of automatic computation, mathematical table and nuclear technology, and their effects on the very landscape we live in are largely hidden from view, and rarely are they considered together; how further from geological earth could mathematical tables to be?
Construction of the ANG; stuffing the assembly in the box, layout and fabrication of the front panel.
First pass at a front panel layout. Rectangularity is OK to work out space
issues, but it's boring, and not the easiest to use. |
Much better use of space. Just lined up by eye. |
Detail documentation. |
Detail documentation. |
Fitting the guts into the box. Clockwise from upper left corner: Arduini Diecimela, power supply, audio and lamp driver,
mail board; black object is the HV supply. |
Rear panel; Arduino USB access, WPS serial buss, AC power. |
Detector tube connector detail. It's a BNC chassis female. I didn't have high-voltage
cable (the detector tube runs at 1400V nominal), just ordinary PVC 300V wire; so I stuck it in
some flexible sheathing. Now it's mostly air insulated. |
Junk in the box, with front panel controls dangling, awaiting
front panel fab. |
The front panel drawing is taped to the panel
for centerpunching. |
I worked up a detailed front panel design in
Inkscape; it has hole location info in red and
the silkscreen artwork in black. However, the
printer was out of red ink so that didn't
print. |
It was easier to use a compass to put interval marks in pencil on the
spiral loudspeaker porting than it was to figure out how to do this
in Inkscape. |
After centerpunching. |
Front panel holes drilled and panel sanded with 320 grit paper. |
This is the detector tube, likely a minor variant of a Geiger-Mueller tube. This was made in 1946 almost certainly by Fermi's techs in the University of Chicago's euphemistic "Metallurgical Laboratory", which was the site of the first "atomic pile", so-called because it was assembled as a huge, filthy, stack of unranium metal and graphite bricks. It still works! I've got a stack of these but the rest have hand-inked 1948 "Argonne Lab" stickers.
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