Four Letter Word Clocks
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Tom Harris
May 27, 2021, 10:54:48 PM5/27/21
to neoni...@googlegroups.com
Greetings,
I am doing a Hackaday project on my enormous FLW build, and I would like to know the history of the FLW concept, I know
Raymond Weisling invented them, is there an authoritative history of them? In particular, who came up with the idea of using a word association database to generate the words?
Tom Harris <celep...@gmail.com>
J Forbes
May 27, 2021, 11:17:15 PM5/27/21
to neonixie-l
A start here...but there is lots more if you delve deep into the old posts on this group.
Tom Harris
May 27, 2021, 11:53:31 PM5/27/21
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Fascinating... Thank you, I've never seen that before. Into the rabbit hole....
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J Forbes
May 28, 2021, 8:37:21 AM5/28/21
to neonixie-l
You're welcome. It took me well under a minute to find that site...but I did know to use the magic word "playboy" in my google search, since I was around this group 20 years ago when Ray was still active.
Tom Harris
May 28, 2021, 5:35:46 PM5/28/21
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Ho Ho I don't often search for "playboy":)
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/9194a110-ac5d-45a3-b1a0-048e8f1f524an%40googlegroups.com.
Dekatron42
May 28, 2021, 5:42:19 PM5/28/21
to neonixie-l
The first link I see when Googling "four letter word clock" is this one: https://pbxbook.com/clocks/B7971_flw.html
Is the original firmware available for download from somwehere or does anyone have any of the microprocessors for sale?
/Martin
Morris Odell
May 29, 2021, 5:12:16 AM5/29/21
to neonixie-l
That's an interesting site that I hadn't seen before. I never suspected the algorithm that RW used in the original FLW clock was so circuitous but taking the technology of the time into account it's not really surprising. I have made several FLW clocks over the years both with B7971 tubes and with CRT displays. By the time I got interested in them it was possible to download the entire Scrabble 4000 word four letter dictionary into a $5 microcontroller and have enough memory left to run the clock, generate random numbers (for indexing) and do vector graphics. In my clocks the word changes every 5 or 10 seconds and there is a switch on the back to control whether or not "rude" words are shown. The grandkids love it as a word game.
Incidentally the price of US$195 in 1973 is equivalent to about US$1195 today. Only a certain demographic could afford one!
Morris
Tom Van Baak
May 29, 2021, 9:08:54 AM5/29/21
to neoni...@googlegroups.com
Ray Weisling went to extraordinary lengths to fit his code and all the
words into very limited memory. Today, because memory is plentiful and
cheap, one would simply create a large table of all FLW, each word using
4 bytes. It would be so simple.
But instead he resorted to bit tricks. For example he created an
alphabet consisting of only 16 letters (not 26). That way a single
letter would use not 8, or 5, but just 4 bits. Thus any 4 letter word
that was a member of that alphabet required only 16 bits to encode, a 2x
memory saving. Very clever.
By creating several different sets of 16-letter alphabets he was able to
generate almost all the words you see. The remaining few exceptions were
done with a 4 byte table. To me it looked like a massive amount of
manual work, almost like a puzzle, but that's what you did as an
embedded programmer in the 90's when literally every byte counted.
I've seen the source code. It might be on the web, I don't know. Ray hit
hard times (again) in 2013; we exchanged a lot of Nixie email that year;
he sold me his personal FLW and GEEK clock to cover bills. He died not
that long after. His clocks, of course, live on and work perfectly.
/tvb
www.LeapSecond.com
words into very limited memory. Today, because memory is plentiful and
cheap, one would simply create a large table of all FLW, each word using
4 bytes. It would be so simple.
But instead he resorted to bit tricks. For example he created an
alphabet consisting of only 16 letters (not 26). That way a single
letter would use not 8, or 5, but just 4 bits. Thus any 4 letter word
that was a member of that alphabet required only 16 bits to encode, a 2x
memory saving. Very clever.
By creating several different sets of 16-letter alphabets he was able to
generate almost all the words you see. The remaining few exceptions were
done with a 4 byte table. To me it looked like a massive amount of
manual work, almost like a puzzle, but that's what you did as an
embedded programmer in the 90's when literally every byte counted.
I've seen the source code. It might be on the web, I don't know. Ray hit
hard times (again) in 2013; we exchanged a lot of Nixie email that year;
he sold me his personal FLW and GEEK clock to cover bills. He died not
that long after. His clocks, of course, live on and work perfectly.
/tvb
www.LeapSecond.com
Bill Notfaded
Jun 1, 2021, 12:23:44 PM6/1/21
to neonixie-l
Also Pete Hand from LV designed a better FLW clock. I have his original I bought from his family/friends after he passed on... RIP brother nixie neon lover! You can see Michael's much "enhanced" version on badnixie: http://www.badnixie.com/Acrylic_Nixie.html
I love this clock and it still works great today.
Bill
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