Evolving clocks

I've always had a fascination with genetic algorithms, and have played around with them a good deal in the last few years. This started when a good friend wrote a simple logic based game where one could play the computer. He set the computer going against itself and evolved it through a simple genetic algorithm. Soon enough we weren't able to beat the computer and it would play moves that we simply couldn't understand until later in the game.

The following is a lovely example of a relatively simple genetic algorithm used to create a time keeping device from its constituent parts:


(Noted on Pharyngula)