World's Simplest General Computer - Based on Rule 110

Less technical description of my marble based computer
Jim Lewis, CEO of emachineshop.com
More technical details in this version of video:
• Rule 110 marble computer
CAD file for those who want to build one: cad.emachineshop.com:81/#/sha...
Transcript:
For several years I've been thinking about building a mechanical computer that demonstrates the Rule 110 principle. In this video I'll show my marble machine which I call the Rule 110 Marble Computer. Many marble machines have been built by others. Some of them demonstrate a computing function such a binary counter I did several years ago. A classic toy called the Digi-Comp II could do basic arithmetic. But none of them are capable of general programmable computing. The device I built is capable of general computing if extended to many more bits. Rule 110 is a system based on a series of binary digits which change according to very simple rules. The balls act as electricity would in a normal computer. When pointing to the left each flipper is a 1 and to the right is a 0. The computer is run by rocking back and forth. Before we start up the computer, we have to program it. We do that by setting the bits. To the best of my knowledge a rule 110 based computer is currently the simplest known type of computer and as far as I know, this marble machine is the first purely mechanical implementation of a rule 110 computer. Each bit is made of the base, the ball, 4 links and 8 flippers. The base was machined at eMachineShop out of 6061 aluminum and powder coated metallic blue. There might be a better way of programming rule 110 computers that is faster and uses less bits. Discovering such a method could potentially move rule 110 into more practical computing domains - perhaps ultra nano molecular scale computers or some such future technology.
Background music: www.bensound.com