One of the activities of the John von Neumann Society (NJSzT) is collecting and presenting the best traditions and history of technology. That was what motivated NJSzT to join the “Night of Museums”, a countrywide series of educational events. The museums are open till late at night on the longest night, showcasing their most interesting exhibits.
NJSzT’s event was a tremendous success. They presented the freshly made clone of the MIKROMAT cybernetics building set, which is a toy computer model, created 55 years ago. The visitors could wire programs with this relay-operated toy, realising then binary and logic circuits, basic games, and mathematical instructions.
The emblematic object of Neumann Society’s exhibition is the “Szeged Ladybug”, that can be seen in operation. The device was designed by one of the founders of this collection, Daniel Muszka in 1956-57. It is a self-moving, trainable robot, able to follow the light of a torch. The robot has been ‘invited’ to Oxford, where NJSzT will be going to demonstrate it to visitors as a forerunner of Artificial Intelligence sciences.
