Scrying engine

Hamangia figurines computing the Lorenz system. The computations are represented by the yellow lines, outside the vitrine. The colored lines on the figurines themselves result from the monitoring process.

A scrying engine is any engine which causes or facilitates scrying.

The Patrick Device

The Patrick Device is the first scrying engine invented, setting the standard for subsequent engines.

Hamangia scrying engines

The Hamangia culture invented a variety of primitive yet surprisingly powerful scrying engine techniques.

John Brunner has speculated that the figures deliberately arranged to have themselves placed in the museum, for their own unknown reasons.

Lee and Turner color projector

John Brunner's custom engine.

John Brunner owns a Lee and Turner color projector which has been extensively custom modified for use as a scrying engine.

The device uses Edward Turner’s original method for visualizing the Computational Human Phantom as successive frames on black and white film through red, green and blue filters and to project these sets of three frames superimposed through similar filters. Images are translated through red, green and blue filters into the scrying engine kernel at the rate of 16 pictures per second.

Brunner once called it "the best bloody tool I ever bought."

Canterbury scrying engine

Canterbury Cathedral (nonfiction) has a built-in scrying engine which is reliable for simple calculations across a wide range of time and space.

Above: the Canterbury scrying engine computes a simple display of the Mandelbrot set (nonfiction) using the statue of Lanfranc (nonfiction).

The Rosenwald sheets

The Rosenwald sheets function as rudimentary scrying engine, apparently providing a matrix (nonfiction) for scrying routines.

Gnomon algorithm

Scrying engines are assumed to use some form of the Gnomon algorithm for energy, control, etc.

Universal Turing machines

A Universal Turing machine U. U consists of a set of instructions in the table that can “execute” the correctly-formulated “code number” of any arbitrary Turing machine M on its tape. In some models, the head shuttles back and forth between various regions on the tape. In other models the head shuttles the tape back and forth.

Scrying engines are closely related to Universal Turing machines.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• The Patrick Device

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Canterbury Cathedral (nonfiction)
• Computer science (nonfiction)
• Engine (nonfiction)
• Scrying (nonfiction)