[time-nuts] are any time-nuts also random-nuts?

Bill Hawkins bill at iaxs.net
Wed Dec 23 21:32:39 UTC 2009


Went to a talk about Monte Carlo methods at MIT sometime before 1955.
A rack full of equipment and a scintillation counter (maybe two)
generated the randomness. Have three big scintillation counters
available cheap, if you like vacuum tubes.

Picked up a Grason Stadler noise generator some time ago. A 6D4 gas
thyratron and magnets produce white noise out to about a megacycle.
See http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/6d4.pdf

Tubes also include a 12AT7 buffer and filter amplifier, 6V6 output
to 500 ohms, no transformer, and a 5Y3 rectifier in a 3.5" rack mount
package. Selectable 20 or 200 KHz low cutoff for audio work.

Doesn't seem to have a USB connector, but there's no moving parts.

Wish I could say I'd spent hours listening to it's perfect sound
stage (noise is indistinguishable from today's music) but I've never
turned it on.

Holiday cheers,
Bill Hawkins


-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Burris
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:07 AM

I saw this USB connected hourglass for producing random numbers:

http://home.comcast.net/%7Ehourglass/

Anyone pursuing perfect randomness in the same way this group pursues
time and frequency?  Maybe cryptologists.	

I'm tempted to build an ethernet connected variant of this.  Then of course
we need a distribution mechanism.  How about RNDP, the Random Number
Distribution Protocol?  A la NTP, clients could select for the server with
the
most randomness :-)

Scott




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