John List's homebrew Life computer

John List designed and built this "Life" cellular automata computer from December 1973 to March 1974. It plays Life at up to 30 generations per second with a 64x64 universe, and uses an RF modulator to display on a television. It uses 81 TTL chips (mainly 7400 and 74S00 series), 11 MOS shift register chips, and eight decoded seven-segment LED displays. The total materials cost at the time, excluding the LED displays, was $317, equivalent to almost $1500 in 2007 dollars.