Abstract :
It is shown that electronic digital calculating machinery, and systems which represent information in digital form, may in principle be constructed from an assemblage of three basic elements. These are a bistable element for the storage of a digit, a gate for controlling the flow of digits, and a diode for controlling the direction of flow of digits. The properties and use of an element which consists of a bistable element and two gates are described, and it is then shown that the functions of this element may be realized in the form of a practical vacuum tube based upon beam-deflection principles. This tube does not lend itself to the construction of a practical large-scale store, but rather to extensive use in the control and arithmetic sections of a digital machine.
