Random Number seeds, was RE: First computer with real-time clock?

[William Donzelli]

>    And just why would that be a bad idea?  Remember this was back some 
> years - your glib "these days" doesn't apply to 'them days'...   in the 
> 60's and 70's it was not trivial to develop 'real' random numbers, so 
> various means were used to sample a physical source or 'randomness'.  I 
> have an audio whit noise generator (Grayson Stadler) that uses a 6CB4 tube 
> with a small bar magnet in proximity to the envelope - this exacerbates 
> the transit noise of the tube and produses a very nice 5 Htz to about 50 
> kHtz stream of chaos.

This is pretty standard stuff in the military ECM world (I think the
O-202/ALA-7 pulse generator works the same way, early B-52 era stuff). In
fact, some relatively normal tubes were made for this trick.

I found my box of phototube noise generators, pulled out of WW2
jammers. Cheap. Email if interested.

William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org