Elementary cellular automaton
Description:
An elementary cellular automaton is a simple model consisting of a one-dimensional array of cells. Each cell can be either "alive" (black) or "dead" (white). For the automaton to evolve, the next state of each cell is determined by the state of three cells: itself, its left neighbor, and its right neighbor.
There are 8 possible combinations for three neighboring cells. Scientist Stephen Wolfram proposed encoding rules using 8-bit binary numbers (from 0 to 255). This yields exactly 256 distinct rules.