Cats and the Ultimate Machine

This cat-in-a-box (not to be confused with Schrödingers cat) hauling in coins placed onto the fishbone-marked right corner I found on the counter of a fast-food shop in Seoul: 

It so reminded me of Claude Shannon’s ultimate machine:

One of his more humorous devices was a box kept on his desk called the “Ultimate Machine”, based on an idea by Marvin Minsky. Otherwise featureless, the box possessed a single switch on its side. When the switch was flipped, the lid of the box opened and a mechanical hand reached out, flipped off the switch, then retracted back inside the box. Renewed interest in the “Ultimate Machine” has emerged on YouTube and Thingiverse.

A matching (while somewhat more commercial) tribute to the founder of Information Theory –

here is a video of an ultimate machine or “leave-me-alone!”-box in action:

And of course, there is a lego version, too!

In terms of theoretical computer science, One could also describe it as the mechanical implementation of a very simple state-machine with just two states (OFF,ON) or (0, 1) and a transition-function that simply returns from ON back to the OFF state in limited time.

Or as the wise cat would put it: Miaow!