Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/12/how-to-make-a-replica-of-the-g.html
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Way to bury the lede about Claude Shannon writing the manual
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Oh wow, even Wikipedia doesn’t mention that, but there it is! https://books.google.com/books?id=Dy0DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA261&q=shannon#v=snippet&q=shannon&f=false
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(Wikipedia now mentions it.)
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Actually Oliver Garfield wrote the manual. Claude Shannon’s masters thesis: “On the Symbolic Analysis of Relays and Switching Circuits” was included with each kit purchased.
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Although Shannon did design (although probably not write the manual for either), another educational “computer” of the era – the Minivac 601.
Dr. Shannon did get the credit he deserves in the write up for my Minivac 601 replica:
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I did my first coding on a Minivac when I was 5 or so!
EDIT: Well, it did involve moving wires and contacts around, so I suppose it wasn’t, technically, coding…
You have me beat. I didn’t start “coding” on my Digi-Comp I until I was 12. Of course that involved pushing short lengths of straws onto plastic pegs.
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I should probably be ashamed to admit it but I actually received one of these as a Christmas gift sometime around 1961.
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The Minivac belonged to my brothers who were both in college by then. They thought it would be fun to teach their kid sister how to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (I never did master division) on the Minivac.
When they weren’t there to make me adhere to the rules, I just connected random stuff to see what it would do. 
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