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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.ai
Subject: Re: Alternate Computer Architectures (Naive Questions)
Message-ID: <163@phri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Jan-85 11:32:29 EST
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Posted: Mon Jan 28 11:32:29 1985
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>   1. What work has been done in actually building an optical computer??
>      (That is a computer whose logic states are determined by 
>       properties of light)
> 
> Michael Bloomberg
> [ihnp4,akgua,decvax,dcdwest,ucbvax]!sdcsvax!noscvax!bloomber

I was at the "Computers in Science" conference held Oct 29 -- Nov 1, 1984
in Washington and heard a distincly facinating talk about the optical and
electronic properties of polymeric solids (specificly substituted poly-
acetlyenes).  Most of it went right over my head (I suspect it would have
been better recieved by an audience of semiconductor physicists), but the
gist of it was that these solids can be made to change their conductivity
by a factor of 10**12 (!!) by illuminating them with the proper wavelength
of light.  This is all real exploratory basic research, but it seems
plausable that these materials could be fabricated monolithicly.  I would
have posted the abstract, but I suspect that would violate copyrights.

The only address I have for the author is: Sukant Tripathy, GTE Laboratories,
Inc. Waltham, Ma.  If you have any interest, I would strongly suggest digging
up the literature.
-- 

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