Back in September 1995, David Buckingham showed how to construct oscillators and glider guns of any period at least 61 in Conway’s Game of Life. His method was based on a tool called a “Herschel conduit“; a configuration of still lifes that can be used to move a Herschel from one location to another. By stitching together several of these Herschel conduits, we can create a complete track for the Herschel to move around, thus creating an oscillator (or a gun, if we let the glider that the Herschel naturally creates escape).

Herschel tracks are still used constantly in Conway’s Game of Life, and I’m starting a series of video tutorials that show how they work. Part 1 is now up:

The pattern animations throughout the video were all made with Manim. Once I get a few more videos under my belt, and my code cleaned up a bit more, I’ll share my code for making pretty Life animations.