Clanking replicator

Further reading

• Colvin, Fred H. (1947), Sixty Years with Men and Machines, New York and London: McGraw-Hill, LCCN 47003762. Available as a reprint from Lindsay Publications (ISBN ). Foreword by Ralph Flanders.
• M. Sipper, Fifty years of research on self-replication: An overview, Artificial Life, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 237–257, Summer 1998.
• Freeman Dyson expanded upon Neumann's automata theories, and advanced a biotechnology-inspired theory. See Astrochicken.
• The first technical design study of a self-replicating interstellar probe was published in a 1980 paper by Robert Freitas.
• Clanking replicators are also mentioned briefly in the fourth chapter of K. Eric Drexler's 1986 book Engines of Creation.
• Article about a proposed clanking replicator system to be used for developing Earthly deserts in the October 1995 Discover Magazine, featuring forests of solar panels that powered desalination equipment to irrigate the land.
• In 1995, Nick Szaboproposed a challenge to build a macroscale replicator from Lego robot kits and similar basic parts. Szabo wrote that this approach was easier than previous proposals for macroscale replicators, but successfully predicted that even this method would not lead to a macroscale replicator within ten years.
• In 1998, Chris Phoenixsuggested a general idea for a macroscale replicator on the sci.nanotech newsgroup, operating in a pool of ultraviolet-cured liquid plastic, selectively solidifying the plastic to form solid parts. Computation could be done by fluidic logic. Power for the process could be supplied by a pressurized source of the liquid.
• In 2001, Peter Ward mentioned an escaped clanking replicator destroying the human race in his book Future Evolution.
• In 2004, General Dynamics completed a study for NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts. It concluded that complexity of the development was equal to that of a Pentium 4, and promoted a design based on cellular automata.
• In 2004, Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle published the first comprehensive review of the field of self-replication, in their book Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, which includes 3000+ literature references.
• In 2005, Adrian Bowyer of the University of Bath started the RepRap project to develop a rapid prototyping machine that would be able to replicate itself, making such machines cheap enough for people to buy and use in their homes. The project is releasing material under the GNU GPL. [1]