Switch engine/Snippet

A switch engine is a methuselah that was found by Charles Corderman in 1971. It is unstable by itself, but it can be used to make c/12 diagonal puffers and spaceships.

There are two basic types of stabilized switch engine, both of which were also found by Charles Corderman: the period 288 block-laying switch engine (the more common of the two) and period 384 glider-producing switch engine. These two puffers are the most natural infinite growth patterns in Life, being the only ones (besides combinations of them) ever seen to occur from non-symmetric random starting patterns.