Timeline of Life facts

This is a timeline of some key events related to the Game of Life since John Conway brought it to life.

Timeline

John Horton Conway invents the Game of Life
First oscillators of periods 2, 3, 4, 8, 14, 15 and 30 are found: blinker, pulsar, pinwheel, figure eight, tumbler, pentadecathlon and queen bee shuttle
The first c/4 diagonal spaceship, the glider, is discovered by Richard Guy, the only known until 1999
The first c/2 orthogonal spaceship, the lightweight spaceship, is found by John Conway
The first gun, the Gosper glider gun--the first known finite pattern with unbounded growth--is discovered by Bill Gosper
Martin Gardner writes two popular "Mathematical Games" columns in Scientific American, thereby introducing the Game of Life to a much wider audience

Lifeline, first Life newsletter edited and published by Robert Wainwright (March 1971)
The first known puffers that travelled at c/2 orthogonal are found (1971)

The HashLife algorithm is first described by Bill Gosper in the early 1980s
John Conway proves in Winning Ways that the Game of Life has a (finite) universal computer, as well as a universal constructor (1982)
Dean Hickerson creates the first oscillator search program (1989)
As a result of search programs, the first spaceship other than the standard four and flotillas is found (1989)
XLife is developed, allowing much larger patterns to be simulated relatively efficiently on "modest hardware" (1989)

The first non-monotonic spaceship, the 13-engine Cordership, is found (1991)
Johan Bontes' fast CA editor Life32 becomes available (mid-1990s)
The first c/5 orthogonal spaceship, the snail, is discovered (1996)
Alan Hensel's fast Java applet makes his extensive pattern collection easily available on the Internet (1996)
David Buckingham develops a suite of components leading to a universal set of Herschel conduits, enabling complex signal processing using stable constellations of small still lifes (1996)
The first true period 24 and 48 guns are discovered (June 1997)

The Caterpillar, the first self-supporting mega-spaceship, is completed (2004)
Golly is born (July 2005)
Brice Due's OTCA metapixel appears (just in time to show off Golly's HashLife capabilities) (2006)
Forums for Conway's Game of Life is born (December 2008)
LifeWiki goes live (January 2009)
LifeWiki's 600 patterns milestone is reached (June 2009)
First oscillators of period 37 and 51 are found (2009)

Adam P. Goucher completes a pi calculator pattern based on APGsembly (2010)
Andrew J. Wade surprises the Life community with Gemini, the first complete self-constructing spaceship
The Snark is discovered (April 2013)
Adam P. Goucher's Catagolue online database of objects in CGOL and similar cellular automata is launched (2015)
Conwaylife Lounge is born on Discord (September 2017)
The first elementary oblique spaceship, Sir Robin, is discovered (March 2018)

Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction, the definitive CGOL textbook by Nathaniel Johnston and Dave Greene, is published (2022)
After 50 years, the Unique father problem is solved, giving us the first known unsynthesizable still life (2022)
The first unsynthesizable oscillator is constructed (2022)
Life is shown to be omniperiodic (July 2023)