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The Walton Heath Rod Memory (detail), Somerset Levels. This portion shown contains
a fragment of the program "Osric the Stoat".
This particular Rod Memory has been radio-carbon dated to 2300 bc. It has been heavily damaged by later bronze age inhabitants, who, not recognizing it's importance, used it as a hurdle track in the marsh. Its structure is identical to the later miniaturized Druidic twig memories. Woven from hazel rods taken from a coppiced woodland on the nearby Polden Hills, it contains the equivalent of 20 kilobytes, of which only 1000 kilobits are shown. Rod Memories were subdivided thusly: The basic indivisable unit of memory was the rod, which corresponds to our bit. Unlike the bit, rods only have one state, as they are used to represent digits of the unary number system. Twenty five rods (corresponding to one panel of rods) made a gyte. Two gytes, or fifty rods, made a fagyte. Four fagytes made a trey. The image shows five treys, or one kilorod. It is believed that rods which were broken, knobby or covered with moss or lichen aided in the eventual development of fuzzy logic.
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