This is a bit random - Vintage Random Number Generator

An unusual piece of tech from the 1970s - a Random Number Generator.
The ebay advert for this suggested that the buyer could gut it for the nixie tubes. When I read that, I knew that I had to rescue this unusual little piece of electronics history.
Channels mentioned in the video
The Back Office / ajarmstr
FranLab / contourcorsets
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Nu-spin 1978

[@livarot1]

But how is indeterminate delay time achieved?

[@enojelly9452]

One approach would be that the 555 timer IC is just constantly firing with a fixed period of several seconds, no matter if the counters are currently counting or not. If the counter is running, the 555 provides the signal to stop the counter. The moment at which the 555 will stop the counter then depends on when you started it (pressing the button does not influence the 555 but only start the counter), which is "random enough". There is some small added randomness due to the fact that the 555's period is determined with simple analog components (mostly resistance and capacitance), whose characteristics change with temperature and other environmental factors. If the counter counts fast enough, that could add some tiny bit of entropy to the mix.

[@askhowiknow5527]

It chooses a random number to decide when to stop and select a random number, and so on. It’s a paradox-this is his April Fool’s video

[@PixelOverload]

the button compresses and the cycling stops when it's fully extended again, at least that's what it looks like from the angled operation shots

[@TheRealColBosch]

It rolls five very, very small ten-sided dice.

[@GigsVT]

you can generate pretty random numbers by having a fast free running oscillator.. i.e. NOT gate into itself, then sample it with a much more slowly running signal pushing bits into a shift register. The drift of the free running oscillator is random enough when its oscillating at hundreds or thousands of times faster than your sample rate.

[@PBRStreetgang]

I recognized this Nu-Spin device as soon as I saw it. Our church youth group (early 1990's) used this as a nice display piece for raffles a couple of times a year. Our pastor said it had been donated to the church from our county courthouse when they moved into a new building. It had been used for drawing jury pools from a numeric list of registered voters in our district. Seems like overkill, but there you go. We were always fascinated by the Nixie tubes; didn't know what they were called until I stumbled across your channel a few years ago!

[@alfoncejean8826]

PBR Streetgang isn't random games supposed to be worck of the devil or something?

[@PBRStreetgang]

.....What? Random games? Wor(c)k of the devil? More or something than supposed to be I think. Was your comment the work of a random word generator?

[@buddyclem7328]

Neil Roy And some churches have bingo night, or similar games of chance as fundraisers, even in places where gambling is otherwise illegal. So, it's open to interpretation, but I don't have any problem with gambling, morally or financially.

[@geofftaylor8913]

Alfonce Jean that is from apocalypse now. It is the designation for the type of boat they were in and their call sign I believe.

[@PBRStreetgang]

+Geoff Taylor: Correct, just like many military acronyms, it's a little bit off and nonsensical. PBR = "Patrol Boat, River" The actual call sign in the movie was "Almighty", which was to be used to call in the attack on Col. Kurtz's compound. It's an amazing movie, and I feel like I catch something new every time I watch it.

[@DjZelous]

Only techmoan can make a 9 minuite video intresting enough about a machine that just generates random numbers

[@proCaylak]

I think that LGR would be able to do it too, lol

[@DesmondScifo]

and i watched it twice hehe

[@mogshade66]

Dj Zelous Isn't it great 😊

[@djk8541]

Techmoan and ExplainingComputers are the best UK based channels in my opinion

[@ethanoreilly2002]

Indeed

[@newborgcity4363]

As a child I would go with my parents to a social club on a Saturday night and during that evening there would be a raffle and this machine was used for that purpose. I remember the manufacture name being identical to the one you have. The company also sold the raffle tickets to the club on large rolls as the same name was pre printed on them.

[@souperdragon]

Yes, as a child in the late '70s and early '80s I remember clearly these being used in at least 2 social clubs to draw a raffle number, right after the bingo: As my granddad was on the committee of one of the clubs I actually got to play with it - but like you, the novelty wore off after about 6 minutes! I think the random delay is something to do with charging that big capacitor with a wave function, then the discharge time of the cap is when the numbers stop sequencing. Basically a rapid saw-tooth wave is generated, then when you let go of the button, the voltage (value) of that wave is used to charge the capacitor, it then discharges, and stops the count. Its actually pretty random.

[@lucifer2b666]

What's a social club?

[@Havron]

@@lucifer2b666 What's "social"?

[@saraha180]

The fact that it has a "low" is a pretty good piece of evidence for the raffle hypothesis. If you've ever sold raffle tickets, the way it works is you buy a giant spool of preprinted tickets that have sequential numbers on them. Each time you run a raffle, you make note of the number of the first ticket you sold, and then you read off the number of the first ticket you have left. You then pick a random number that's greater or equal to the first one you sold and less than the first one that's left. This is _exactly_ the mechanics of this device, down to the seemingly strange behavior that the "low" is inclusive but the "high" is inclusive. (Using this algorithm allows you to buy one big spool with thousands of tickets and use it for dozens of raffles over time, without expecting people to return their tickets in good shape.)

[@Timeward76]

The high is non-inclusive*

[@juukyll]

I guess that what she meant, since you would want to exlude the high ticket that you haven't sold.

[@DiodeGoneWild]

There are 5 of 7490 counters and each one is from a different manufacturer! This is just amazing....

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

DiodeGoneWild But 7490 has no preload function to start at a specific count.

[@chrisg6597]

Your absolutely right about the unit being used for raffle ticket draws. My very first job back in 1981 was building electronic bingo machines and random number generators for use in bingo halls. The random number generator we built was based on a single chip counter/timer (the chip number escapes me), with quite a bit of external mop-up logic. The display itself consisted of 6 (I think, though may have been 5) 7 segment displays, however, as large 7 segment displays wern't available in them days, they were made up using 3 5mm red LEDs per segment, which gave them a look a bit like the LED watches of the day. Again the PCB's were made in-house, and in our case the box was black melamine chipboard with a smoked perspex front to increase the contrast of the LEDs.

[@kennethbouchard8643]

The scoring displays on the bowlers and skee ball machines were done using 12 volt mini bulbs, and several array IC's that fanned out the 8 bit logic coming from the computer box. They used large plastic blocks with mylar frosted and black plastic masks to make them function. Those used 7 segments, for the 6 digits 2 smaller ones below the 4 scoring digits to display how many balls you rolled per game. Then above that were 3 more 12 volt bulbs used to indicate game over, or player 1 player 2. All hidden behind a plexiglass panel.

[@zosxavius]

So the counters were just freerunning all the time right? That basically would give the illusion of RNG because the random input is the button press.

[@chrisg6597]

Correct. Button release disables the latch (Display Hold) function so that the display can be seen counting, and also starts a short delay timer. At the end of the timer delay the display is latched (Hold). I've looked back through the video of this unit and it appears to be exceptionally crude. The 7490 counters don't have a load function so the start number can't be loaded into the counters, also there is no latching function available with the chips used. Unfortunatey the video doesn't show the back of the thumbwheel switches, to see if there is any logic chips/diodes incorporated for comparison of the lower/upper number limits of the counters, so how this unit actually works would be total speculation.

[@zosxavius]

Yeah. It looks extremely crude IMO. I watched the teardown section a few times and couldn't really figure out what was going on. I'd love to see how it was wired.

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

What was the reasoning behind this approach as opposed to a pseudo-random number generator seeded by a random source?

[@steerpike9204]

I worked for an engineering company a while back & we used one of these (or something very similar) for a staff lottery. After many years we eventually identified a sort of memory effect or bias towards certain numbers. It was small, but definitely measurable over enough spins. Strangely enough it was cured by leaving the machine unplugged when not in use. We never really identified the actual cause of the effect, mostly because the electronics people had more important things to do. Just posted this anecdote as I thought you might find it vaguely interesting. love your channel by the way, full of interesting stuff & very educational!

[@CrashPilot1000]

The experts use this device to calculate the cost for the taxpayer for a government project.

[@NOWThatsRichy]

CrashPilot1000 Ha Ha that would need a 7 digit display!

[@CrashPilot1000]

Yep, they probably use a newer model or run the old one twice... :)

[@eurovision50]

Hahaha!

[@therugburnz]

funny coz its true

[@rivards1]

But then it wouldn’t need a “maximum” dial.

[@PXAbstraction]

One burning question was not answered in this video though: What happens if you set the starting low number higher than the ending number?!

[@Natalie-ez1zc]

bump

[@Szarus123]

Bump

[@mcrsit]

Uuuh interesting...

[@BertGrink]

I think it might cause the universe to fold back on itself and restart with a new Big Bang! Just joking of course. ;)

[@summerlaverdure]

BUMP

[@Brookspirit]

I used to go to a pub in London that had one of these (or similar). When you bought a drink they asked you to pick a number, if you won you got a free drink.

[@Nostalgianerd]

I was thinking 80085... sounds familiar.... not sure why... *displays*... ahhhhhhhh.

[@freezetile8588]

It's a really 1337 number! :-)

[@ArthurEmbleton]

Doesn't work so well on Nixie tubes. Really need 7 segment displays for that

[@ohnoitschris]

In elementary school, some kid cracked me up and I shamefully couldn't stop laughing for like 10 minutes over some calculator joke that went like "Madonna had a size 89 bra, and it was 2 2 2 small", and for every number he said, he added it in the calculator and it came out "55378008", or "BOOBLESS" upside down. That was embarrassing to write.

[@Pyrometheous]

Yeah, I went through the same mental process with that, lol

[@amnottabs]

in my head I did read this with your voice, man I'm beyond help

[@NickKravitz]

In USA middle school in the mid 1980s we learned how to generate random numbers from tables. We were told a common application of random numbers generators were factory quality control. It is pretty well known and studied that humans are poor at picking truly random numbers; therefore a random number generator would pick products on the assembly line at random for QC inspection. The formula int(rand(100)) would also pick a number between 0 and 99 due to the "integer" function disposing of the decimal part and therefore rounding down. However not sure why you cannot pick a random number out of 3 choices. Great video, interesting!

[@AtomicShrimp]

What happens if you set the low number higher than the high number?

[@AlabamaShrimp]

Are we related?

[@elvisburgerking8675]

you don't want to do that ! it would be far worse than " crossing the streams "

[@ethan2bart]

Hello, I'm a music teacher. I am about to start a unit on the ways we have listened to music throughout recent history and the way those technologies work with some 6th graders in West Virginia. The idea was inspired by watching some of your videos over the past year or two. I just wanted to thank you for your videos and their educational value.

[@djsmeguk]

You should ask bigclive if he wants to reverse engineer the schematic for that thing. I'm sure it'd be a fascinating piece of 70s electrical engineering.

[@pdrg]

From a comment above - 5x 74141 BCD to decimal (for the nixie tubes), 5x 7490 decade counters, 1x 555 timer, 2x 7400 quad 2-input NAND and I think 1x 7413 dual 4-input NAND Schmitt trigger. That's electonically pretty boring TBH and is all about the display logic rather than the randomiser (which is probably seeded on the turning on of the device and clock oscillations since then, plus an arbitary delay from a partially charged capacitor from the button press?)

[@MadCatmkII]

He'd probably be able to debug the 80085 thing too.

[@djsmeguk]

The stuff we see is probably display logic yes, but as you point out - it's not very clear where it derives it's randomness from. It's probably related to some sort of astable RC circuit associated with the 555 but what controls it?

[@SianaGearz]

I suggest crowdsourcing it. I can likely reverse engineer it from just 2 decent photos. The problem is exactly that i didn't see where the random number generator is, who cares about the pedestrian display bits.

[@wolvenar]

djsmeguk Maybe capacitor charged via button push, and the subsequent discharge time. During that time the 555 generates pulses causing a decade counter (DM7490AN) to continue to count, and roll back over until the 555 stops generating pulses, stopping the count. The setting controls just set the initial count limits in a binary of sorts. Th counter has some additional circuitry after this to work out how to display with gates and others to drive the nixie tubes. Of course this is significantly simplified and a guess at its operations. I could take some real time to work out the full functionality of that circuit because those images are plenty good enough to do so. But that's my guess from a few seconds of looking it over and going from memory of what chip numbers do what function.

[@RodrigoVzq]

I am an electronics engineering student and now doing the course of Probability and Statistics. You can imagine how excited I was to watch this

[@erikjohansson1814]

Rodrigo Vazquez No, please describe your excitement.

[@VerticalVertex]

I once worked for a company that used something similar for pin-codes(doors). They changed every month. Not high-sec area, just a regular building and companies renting inside.

[@_evildoer]

WAY WAY back when we had a Commodore Vic20 one of the first programs I wrote was a simple random number generator to pick lottery numbers. I hadnt been paying attention to the numbers I was giving my parents and they got really pissed off at me and told me I am just giving them the same numbers every week. Turns out when you set the program to auto run after loading it off the cassette, the random numbers were exactly the same!

[@alliejr]

Ha Ha! My first VIC20 program was similar: enter the winnner numbers for that week and see if my dad had any winners (his numbers were in a "database" in the code). We date ourselves. Cheers!

no reason to be pissed off though, even if they were the same every week, those numbers had exactly the same chance of winning, as any other set of numbers 😀

[@BlankBrain]

Did you add a seed off the clock?

[@_evildoer]

I cant remember what I did yesterday, let alone almost 40 years ago. Whatever I did it would have been the most basic way possible as I didn't really get into programming at the time.

[@BlankBrain]

I never needed to use random numbers very often, but once I was asked by the Health and Safety department of the company I worked for to write a program. It was supposed to randomly select employees for drug tests. I consulted with another employee who had previously worked on generating numbers for the state lottery. I wrote the (fairly simple) program and tested it. They used it a couple of times, then discontinued because it hadn't been certified by the Department of Labor. The software they had to buy to replace what I had written cost over $10,000.

[@thecianinator]

In 50 years this KZbin channel is going to be a treasure trove for historians

[@hf7188]

I don't know about past uses, but its a pretty funky way to select giveaways, if you ever do it on this channel.

[@migalito1955]

The interesting thing about random number generating algorithms from the seventies is the numbers are almost surely not actually random, but to us appear random. Its been a long time since I focused on the topic, but it goes something like this: if you think of a sequence of the numbers and grab them say three at a time where they are now seen as a sequence of one finds that they all lie on the same plane in three dimensional space or some hyperplane in 'n' dimensional space when grabbed n at a time. Again, its been a while but once the early attempts at generators were realized to be far from random they improved the algorithims and when in need of a true random number used some technique that was reliable. Not sure how this gadget stacks up to being truly random but on the other hand the gadget is cool in its own merit.

[@djsherz]

Used by car insurance companies to this very day, for generating quotes.

[@asciivision]

The second time I watched it I got the three numbers right

[@dublinius]

I watched it three times and never guessed right.

[@TheSpanielXD]

"Congratulations, you've won a speedboat!" Memories of Bullseye flooding back...

[@Hairyfoot_Studio]

RIP Jim Bowen

[@TheSpanielXD]

I didn't know... Rip Jim.

[@JonnyInfinite]

Spaniel let's have a look at what you could've won..

[@CPS2]

Spaniel "iiiiiiiin one... A stereo cassette player! iiiiiiiin two... Some cut glass decanters!"

[@VoidHalo]

One really cool thing I like about hardware based random number generators is that they're truly random. They're based on physical processes which are completely random, as opposed to software based random number generators which only generate pseudorandom numbers based on algorithms.

[@joshbacon8241]

You know Cecil off Countdown? This is basically one of it’s ancestors, just with two extra digits and with Nixie tubes.

[@iarnell]

That was my first thought too - it was a prototype for the numbers game. I guess they had to dumb it down, though. Even Carol would struggle to get a five digit number with one from the top and any other five.

[@professorpenne9962]

I could sit and watch numbers spin on nixie tubes all day. hypnotic.

[@TheRealColBosch]

Gut it for the Nixie tubes!? My god, that's like buying an 80s Firebird for the decals!

[@AndrewDBunker]

I found an article from the 1970's that mentions a Random Number Generator that was used for Psi Studies and it used nixie tubes. Helmut Schmidt was a physicist-turned paranormal researcher at the Rhine Institute who tried to determine if psychics could influence random events like radioactive decay.

[@SmithMrCorona]

80085? 80085? 80085? Ahhh. . . *80085!* snort

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

The spirit of Sid James is strong on that one!

[@CanuckGod]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[@wwall57]

My dad built one of these in the 70"s, the difference is it generated the lights randomly, no numbers, it had six lights and you could stare at it for hours and it would drive you crazy. I'm not sure what happened to it but if I find it I'm going to get it going again, it had a huge battery in it which I'm sure I can find again, Thanks for the video, it brought back memories of The Box, as my father called it.

[@davidk7262]

One of my friends parents used to run an arcade with a bingo hall. They had a very similar device to generate the numbers and colours. It used nixie tubes for the numbers.

[@i_kickflipped_my_dog]

Your passion for analog equipmemt astounds and also baffles me

[@timharig]

Yes it could be used for lotteries. It might also be used for generating random surveys for research. I used to use something similar for doing quality control sweeps before the start of production in a food production facility to ensure the cleanup crew had done their job. Areas would numbered and the machine would choose which areas were inspected. If the selected areas were clean, then the rest was assumed clean as well. If they were not, they would have to be re-cleaned and more areas would be inspected until the inspections came up clean. This prevented the inspectors from having to do total inspections through statistical sampling and the cleaning crew managers couldn't complain that they were being targeted since the machine chose which areas were inspected.

[@stevenjlovelace]

This looks like something from the Dharma Initiative on "Lost."

[@Hordes_Of_Nebulah]

I do civil engineering for a living and random number generators get used in certain types of testing to determine a random point along an alignment to take a sample. This is often how asphalt samples are taken during highway construction and since every point along the road is stationed out this is how you would determine which stations to take a sample at. That is also one of the worst jobs in the field and thankfully I completely bypassed that phase haha.

[@DesmondScifo]

i think the circuit was in "everyday electronics" i seen one of them, was used in a church lotterie, but it was home brew, from some circuit in i think everyday electronics, if i find it i will post it, i has the magazine at moms house. thanks for the post

[@BertGrink]

That would be quite interesting to see, i hope you can find the diagram.

[@banjax66]

I may have that same magazine somewhere. Was it for a random bingo number generator?

[@DesmondScifo]

i think it was, it was a long time ago, i was given this bundle of magazines, by a widow of a radio ham. I was about 14 and , I used to visit this ham with my father, i was into radios already but my interest was already computers, when the zx80 came out i got one and did a Morse generator with it and with the 81 i did a morse decoder using the cass port, i was considered a child genius back then,, then i found girls lol ( still love electronics) and girls, of the older type (girls) hehe

[@banjax66]

I was distracted by girls too and now I have a son who is 21 years old. (I am 51) Electronics played an early part of my life.. I met electronics before I met girls... Then girls...A girl.. took over my life... I should of stuck to electronics... If only I had known at the time... The girl of my dreams was Satan's daughter, the Grim reaper, the Antichrist .... Say no more.....

[@DesmondScifo]

i know what you mean say no more lol. still with all my younger days vices including broom hilda and her mother, I took the occult as an other hobby / life saver to keep up with them, if you cant' win them join them, still in love with electronics , and one of the kids follows my steps in computers, im 54 last i counted (not with a randome generator)

[@colinedwards7250]

For a final year project in 1975 I designed a random number generator,. Four digits displaying on seven segment Numitrons. The random element was how long you held down the button. It was clocked at 500KHz. The trick was that it must not repeat a number until reset. How that was achieved using memory chips of the time was complex.

[@IrregularShed]

My dad's colleague has one of these! (Or *had* if you bought it from someone in the Gloucester area...) My dad sent me a photo to ask if I knew what it was used for because nobody in his company (of jet engineers!) had the first clue what it was used for - looks like that's a theme!

[@erikjohansson1814]

IrregularShed They must be a bunch of idiots since it’s written on the box ”random number generator”. Jet engines... 😂

[@IrregularShed]

Eryk Johansson The question was what it was possible purpose it could serve, not what it did. Those jet engines will be fine ;)

[@vernonzehr]

Many years ago I worked for a marketing firm that did promotion materials for the state lottery. I remember when they switched from "ping pong balls" to computerized number picks. I was skeptical and not thrilled about it as anything computerized like that added a feeling of "fix-ability" to it. You couldn't see balls bouncing around randomly before numbers were popped up into a tube. There was no explanation on how the numbers were generated, what "equations" were used, how were the pseudorandom generated numbers were "seeded" etc etc. Just "BOOM!" numbers were popped up on screen with no fanfare or drama. I knew a little bit about programming and felt it was not a great idea to rely on them for handing out millions upon millions of dollars on a regular basis and did some research and knew that computer generated random numbers are not "truly" random. I liked the ping pong balls based in reality. Of course maybe I was being paranoid but I kept coming across issues that could arise from improper seeding of pseudorandom number generators. Of course any concerns over true randomness were overridden by the cost of the dang ping pong ball machines. That was the main reason. Those stupid balls and the machines apparently cost a fortune to maintain. Funny that the crazy scandal in PA in the 80's with the weighted ping pong balls wasn't really an issue. They kept using those balls for a long time after.

[@workonesabs]

What happens if you enter the high number as a low number, and the opposite? Will it cause a Logic Fault? E.g High Number enter "00500" and low number, enter "05000"

[@jackallen6261]

The Ionosphere incinerates and the earth is propelled billions of light years into the void...

[@TheSlaterReport]

Props for going for 80085. You are a true visionary.

[@IvyMike.]

I had 248, where do I collect my speedboat from?

[@Havron]

@@ReverendTed 1. Gain access to Techmoan's house during specified time period to collect speedboat win 2. Whilst there, "borrow" his time machine 3. Use time machine to deliver speedboat to present day and swap places with "future" self 4. GOTO 1 5. _???_ 6. *Profit*

[@jezzamarkham5285]

Fun video. I chose 98 and there it was so that was randomly lucky. "If you arn't a nerd stop reading now"!!!! My father (RIP) worked on "Pegasus" (as a charterd electrical engineer) when he was younger but went on to more advanced systems. He for a while was working on a choice of machine to choose premium bond numbers randomly and being the perfectionist he was he came up with three systems none of which was cheap. The premium bond higher echelons said they were way too expensive and decided to go with a much cheaper system. My father dutifully pointed out that this system would start to repeat numbers and become more and more less random over a short time. They ignored him and went with their option which within a year was scrapped for a system that my father now recommend at five times the cost of the origional most expensive system he put forward. They called it "Ernie",my father said they could have named it Doug after him!!!!! Pegasus never successfully ran a single card matrix program to completion ever. You can't win them all.

[@Treblaine]

That may be a bit random, but this is a random bit: 1

[@buddyclem7328]

Treblaine There are 10 ways that could have turned out.

[@Treblaine]

Like my old mathematics teacher always said: There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

[@YellowToad]

i have 100 subs (base 2)

[@patrickkilduff5272]

I always wondered why more people aren't as clever with their video titles....you sir are the master of clever titles...TY.

[@rafamigayt]

What happens when both numbers are set to 00000?

[@flashbang9832]

rafamigayt the universe collapse

[@Techmoan]

Nothing (x5).

[@rafamigayt]

Guess it's another bug. Should return a number between 00000 and 99999. And this implies "99999" won't show up on this device.

[@ozzie_goat]

It catches fire.

[@therealbluedragon]

Time implodes

[@kachitusu]

Random number generators are used all the time in statistics for random assignment to minimize bias, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that was the original intended use

[@NOWThatsRichy]

Just noticed at the beginning the machine still has its original Volex mains plug.

[@MrWombatty]

About 1980 my brother owned a programmable Texas Instruments calculator he used for his university degree, & one of its features was a random-number-generator, but not sure it selected a number using the same process!

[@w7777777s]

I think that the model before this involved a large cylindrical drum with a crank on the side full of paper tickets. Spin it, then open the door and grab one...

[@monkeyboy4746]

Financial auditors use random number generators when checking inventory levels during an audit of a business. They can't check everything, so they assign a number to each inventory item, and use the generator to tell them which items to check the level of in order to get a random sample of what a company says it has on hand.

[@williamroeben]

I enjoy your channel as a matter of daily watching; however, this morning my mother passed away and watching your videos is helping to keep me centered. Thank you.

[@bobjones5166]

I was a programmer for the USAF from 1978 to 1998. WAY back in those days we used punch cards on an old Honeywell main frame. Whenever we needed a random number we would grab the last digit of the clock. That puters clock went out to 9 decimal points. So the last one was moving so fast it was considered to be as random as you could get at that time.

[@bobjones5166]

Should of said we grabbed the number of digits we needed for the number we needed but all were from the last digit of the clock.

[@midiplaybox3453]

What if you set high number to be lower than the low number?

[@gavincurtis]

implosion

[@frankschneider6156]

+ Midi Play Box I was asking myself exactly the same question. :-)

[@perigrimpi2599]

I never used a RNG like this, but there is something called "Monte Carlo methods" in science. Those are methods that solve problems by throwing random numbers at them and then use statistics. Those methods are used for example at the large hadron collider at CERN in Geneva to simulate the outcome of an experiment (of course the simulation and the measurements get compared afterwards, so the theory used for the simulation can be adapted). I don't think they ever used hardware like this, because usually Monte Carlo methods use millions, maybe even billions of numbers, and scientist are more likely to use pseudo random numbers, because they may want to replicate the exact same results with the same random numbers later on. If you are interested in usage of random numbers you may want to look into MC-methods. The name comes from the city Monte Carlo due to its many casinos. Bonus fact: there is a method called "drunken sailor walk" or "drunken sailor method" in the MC-methods, you may find it easier with the name "Markov chain" .

[@BuildItnow]

i swear i see 1337 is so many of techmoans videos

[@AintNobodyAtAll]

Since this had a five-digit display I would have gone with 31337, but that's just me.

[@moconnell663]

That's a part number I have to live with on a daily basis at work. I don't need to be seeing it on my off-hours.

[@brandbryce]

Love it: lovely little cottage-built piece of tech

[@davidriley7659]

would guess this could be used at something like a bingo game? I doubt though it's truely random (most processors that age werent), unless it's hooked up to interpret radio waves.

[@BlankBrain]

...or thermal noise of a diode or transistor.

[@CPS2]

Gernot Schrader tl;dr

[@profpep]

I repaired things like this in the late 70s / early 80s. The ones I fixed were made by a company in the Wigan area called. (initially), "Club 70's". They sold these as electronic Tombola machines. They also made electronic darts scoreboards, (essentially a calculator in a big box with large cold cathode display tubes), and electronic bingo machines - the last of which was a huge case with a Nascom 1 computer inside, and a large, 4 digit display on the front, using individual LEDs. I recognise the build style as similar, and the particular microswitch push button on the front, also used on the scoreboards. Might be the same company.

[@simplelifediy1772]

It reminds me of the old HeathKit projects...

[@mishmashmedley]

Best Random Number Generator for Sci-Fi tabletop games ever.

[@WaybackTECH]

Ya I was thinking raffle tickets, lottery, giveaway or perhaps something associated with gambling/betting. Interesting novelty. Fran is cool, I like her.

[@HamsterSnr]

At 5 mins in the video, you open up the box and show the rats nest of wires on the underside of the board. And in the middle sits a big mains transformer. It does not look professionally made, and even in those days, manufacturers (even small ones) would have taken steps to tie the wires and make a neater job of it. Certainly any signal wire should be far away from the mains power, and I recommend that you get the wiring checked and tied such that that signal and mains wire are not criss-crossing and presenting some potential electrical safety issue when the box is powered up.

[@WatchingDude]

Psychology research uses random generators for choosing research participants or allocating participants to a group.

[@SianaGearz]

But they probably never needed a big showy device for that! Nowadays, you'd write a Python or R script, a few years back you might use RND function of your scientific calculator, and before that you'd use a book of random digits. A book is certainly much cheaper than such device.

[@AustenRedman]

I had a Christmas present of something called IIRC "AutoDice" in the 70s. It was a box, battery powered, and when you pressed a button it would randomly illuminate two images of dice on a glass screen on the lid. Inside it was fairly crude, just penlight bulbs and two rotors that span at high speed and stopped when the button was released. It was meant to replace the dice in board games.

[@jonnycando]

Well it's pseudo random. Real randomness is really hard to come by.

[@mortrek]

i want to see a histogram of maybe a few hundred runs

[@BertGrink]

In one of his videos from about 1 to 2 years ago, i think, Tom Scott visits one of Google's server farms, which uses - hold on to something - Lava Lamps! of all things to generate true randomness. It's part of their security systems.

[@BertGrink]

Ooopsss, i was a bit wrong; it's not Google, but a company called Cloudflare: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z5S4hpmDmrScoMk

[@BlankBrain]

BertyFromOK kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z5S4hpmDmrScoMk

[@guyfawkes9951]

Applesauce.

[@JustAtmosphericNoise]

At first I thought "simple device, it's an ATmega using a random library function of whatever language it's programmed in". And then Mat opened the case

[@John_Ridley]

I very, very much doubt that it's all that random, especially on the high digit.

[@jaredj631]

Actual random number generator's for labs use radiation and a Geiger counter. That much I remember from AN interview I heard on the NPR.

[@CanuckGod]

With something like that it's never going to be random, as it's drawing on some known (at least to the machine) quantity to generate the numbers; at best it's a pseudo-random number generator, but most of us knew that anyway. As Jared said, labs wouldn't use this as it's nowhere near random enough, but it would suffice for most of the rest of us.

[@buddyclem7328]

rumborak Wheel of Fortune only requires that the wheel make one complete revolution.

[@RubenKelevra]

Jared Jeanotte well, a really good random number generator is an ccd chip (which are usually found in cameras) in pitch black. The noise generated by it is just pure random (after filtering static errors) because it's caused mostly by the temperature of the chip itself, just recording it's own Brownian motion. I've heard some rumors that CPUs might have a ccd in the future, build in for the purpose of generating randoms. :)

[@John_Ridley]

Thing is, it is maybe even cheaper to have an actual random number generator. Just use a noisy PN junction and crank it into a shift register at high speed.

[@alex0711a]

I think it can be used for statistical sampling. So if you have a large amount of items and want to test if in general the total amount of items comply with an indicator, you take a sample. And the number generator helps you to identify the items selected as sample.

[@starquake1565]

I love 80085

[@AuntieFan]

NOW I get it. That was slow, even for me.

[@ArtificialLeech]

8===> ~(o)(o)

[@freezetile8588]

80085 are good, but 8008135 are better. :-)

[@philrod1]

1337 skills getting 80085. Worth it!

[@kathrynradonich3982]

Who doesn’t love them?

[@DaveedR]

What a wonderful device! I have no real-world use for it, but what I would give to have it on my desk at work. Just wonderful. Thank you for sharing this.

[@theotherwalt]

What happens if the high number is lower than the low number?

[@Epinardscaramel]

"How does it generate random numbers?" "well, it waits for a random number of seconds" :D

[@steve24822]

I must be psychic! I got all 3 Wrong!!!

[@ForumCat]

I got all three right! On the third viewing.

[@unitrader403]

Plot twist: the Serial Number was the first random number it ever displayed :D

[@JelleDeLoecker]

I thought this was going to be a pure mechanical device because of the nixie tubes and dials, pretty neat to find some microchips in there.

[@SkoddieAltair]

To be fair, those look like ICs rather than any sort of microprocessor

[@enojelly9452]

IC means "integrated circuit" and a microprocessor is also an IC, but yeah, those really are very basic circuits.

[@enojelly9452]

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a purely mechanical device with nixie tubes. It's at least going to have tubes or transistors, though microchips have been available for a pretty long time (these are from 1974).

[@matiassampieri9964]

Fairly certain those are logic gates

[@enojelly9452]

Sampieri Matias few of them are, but there’s also simple counters, a bin-to-dec converter and a 555 timer.

[@MrDuncl]

Regarding the fault, it is most likely a bad contact in one of the IC sockets (which look to be the cheap type we always avoided). There must be comparators comparing the count with the switches. Loose one signal and certain numbers won’t register. You might find other rmathematically related numbers with the same problem.

[@HerringandChips]

Selecting victims.

[@defaultgenCQ]

The fact that you couldn't get it to display 80085 despite the valid range and that you kept getting 80084 repeatedly says a lot about how random it is! It would be fun to do some statistical analysis on its output or at least know how it works. I sure wouldn't want to be part of a lottery using this thing!

[@alanguile8945]

i chose 98!!!!! spooky

[@gtbweo]

Alan Guile 11 here

[@KuMo]

Me too!

[@peeteemz7303]

I chose 34. I’ll never play the lotto again. ☹️

[@nukfauxsho]

RIP

[@adriang1921]

I guessed 98 as well, as was surprised like a child xD

[@benvg]

New T shirt "Congratulations 248 you've won the speedboat" ?

[@ddanny3108]

Is there a trick? I guessed 98 like the other 6 or 7 commenters. I laughed in surprise...

[@LegateGiles]

People used them for D&D and other war and role playing games too, instead of dice, which could be weighed wrong and not random enough. Like, you wouldn't really go out of your way to get one just for that purpose, but if you already had access to one, and you played those games, people would use them. We have die rolling apps now, but these were an alternative to dice. Especially when dice other than 6 sided dice were less common

[@biscuitsalive]

960 frames per second?! What slow mo camera have you got? Did you sell the house and buy a phantom flex?

[@SianaGearz]

SONY RX100V - not cheap, but affordable.

[@baddarkmoon8515]

biscuitsalive doesn’t the new galaxy s9 do 960 FPS slow mo?

[@NLind]

baddarkmoon Yes... but only for 0.2 seconds.

[@vgamesx1]

Both the Sony Xperia XZs and Premium models have also had this feature for a year now and they only cost about $380 and $530 respectively, its only for a 1/5th of a second like the S9 but it's quite affordable these days to acquire a high frame rate camera, heck if you just wanted the camera you could probably pick up a broken/used XZs for around $100 or find an older dedicated camera with high frame rates for a little bit more.

[@rythie]

I think he uses a Sony RX10iii which does 960fps at 1080p in PAL mode.

[@PhilipLeitch]

Random numbers are essential in some forms of mathematics, the obvious example being encryption. But more broadly it is so essentially that old statistics text books had entire appendix with pages of random numbers.

[@puncol]

OMG I had 98! :o HOW?

[@SianaGearz]

There's more than ten thousand people watching this video. That means about 100 or more will be inclined to post the same comment as you.

[@Big_Tex]

Too bad you wasted your luck on this, now you'll never win the lottery

[@turnerlarson12]

I believe that these were used to regulate girdle spring fluctuations in Turbo Encabulators. There are plenty of videos here on KZbin that explain the workings of the Turbo Encabulator worth checking out.

[@wonseok_song]

Steins;Gate anyone?

[@KuMo]

Yup

[@sonuvabitch]

You rang? Are you SERN?

[@burex5905]

I guessed 98. I seriously thought that random number was some kind of a subliminal joke, like if I go "pick a number between 1 and 9", and I start making "sssssss" sounds causing you to pick seven... But it wasn't. It was merely a coincidence. Still spooked the bejezus out of me.

[@michaelparker2449]

How many of you when asked a number immediately thought 69?

[@amyrogers7628]

No-one over the age of 8.

[@tonyhong20]

I always pick 67 for some reason Someday...

[@Chalky.]

Maybe I've watched Bill & Ted's excellent adventure too many times.

[@pauleckert4321]

I did lol

[@gunfighterzero]

42

[@JohnVance]

Techmoan/Fran collab when?? My life would be complete.

[@johnny85er]

hehe B00BS

[@RubenKelevra]

Maybe not a application for this particular machine, but I know a very useful application for real random generators: one time pads. In a nutshell: you have two books with pages full of random numbers or alphabetical characters, you have a different copy of them on the other side of the communication channel. You share a method of selecting the page, or you just switch it on each communication one page forward, you XOR your message two the one time pad, and reverse this afterwards. After using it once, you simply trash it. Reusing one time pads actually happened and then it's possible to decipher both messages - when you use enough effort. If you use them once it's impossible to break cryptography.

[@DMadHacks]

This comment is a bit random.

[@s1nRG]

This reply is a bit random.

[@mg86_]

This edited reply is a bit random.

[@SianaGearz]

Except it's not random, it's arbitrary.

[@davemarm]

DMadHacks Grant Thompson should own this machine

[@tylerkf]

Statisticians often use random number generators to simulate random sampling. Look up for Monte Carlo methods and also random number tables.

[@SeanBZA]

Number bug is from the logic counters used, the load for the low counter will preset that count, then the upper count is a compare on the counter to reset the counter to the preset count. Due to the compare being very fast there is no way for the gated stop pulse, most likely from a simple RC delay on the input push switch generating a slow ramp on a gate input and the variable time being that the threshold trigger for the gate does rather change due to noise slightly, which is going via a clocked latch to ever stop on that count, it will tend to stop on the base value instead as the preset load would have occurred. Thus there is the bias to the initial number that is higher than any other number. Otherwise it is just counting at high speed ( for humans, for the TTL logic used the rate is quite low) at around 100kHz or so, and the jitter in the pushbutton on time from you pressing it does provide quite a big amount of variability in the final count, the count runs around a large number of times in the delay, and is reasonably random. Home made PCB there, and RS components all through the unit, so likely was a cottage industry making them, probably also used an existing 1970's wooden box as well for it, probably intended for audio equipment. The silkscreened perspex front with the cutouts was likely made by a signage shop for the manufacturer, they probably ordered them 20 at a time as they got orders, then built to the order. Having serial number starting at other than 1 is also common, they probably started at 8000 and went up, perhaps the model was the 8th machine in a series designed by the shop, and the first model was serialised at 1000, as they probably figured with such a small usage scenario that 3 digits for a serial number was absolutely never going to be exceeded.

[@superultimatexlrfire462]

A device like this could be used for literally anything an RNG could possibly be used for.

This would be useful for selecting pieces off an assembly line for statistical process control. A random selection of a fixed number comprising only a fraction of the total population would be an accurate statistical sample to perform tests or measurements on that would predict the characteristics of the entire group with a relatively high lever of certainty. These same random selection methods are used for polling or other situations where you would want to accurately predict characteristics of a large population by sampling a small group. The randomness of the sample selection is key to the accuracy of the predictions.