Wireworld simulates electronics. Yellow cells are wire; an electron is a blue head followed by a red tail. Each tick a head becomes a tail, a tail becomes plain wire again, and a wire cell becomes a head if exactly one or two of its eight neighbors are heads. Choose a brush, click or drag to draw, then press Play. Start from the clock and add your own wires.
Brian Silverman invented Wireworld in 1987. Despite having only four states it is Turing complete: people have built diodes, logic gates, memories and even whole working computers out of wire and electrons. The clock above is a loop with one electron circulating; each lap it also sends a copy up the side wire. A head that meets a wire cell with three or more head neighbors does nothing, which is what makes diodes and gates possible. Unlike the other automata here, the edges do not wrap.
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