Carl Adam Petri
computer science
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Petri net
- At the age of thirteen,
- Carl Adam Petri
- invented a graphic tool
- for modeling chemical processes.
- Circular symbols
- represent states,
- rectangular symbols
- represent transitions,
- directed arcs
- connect them,
- and tokens
- represent objects
- that exist in states.
- Transitions may “fire”
- concurrently
- when their input states
- have sufficient tokens.
- When a transition fires,
- it consumes tokens in input states
- and creates tokens
- in output states.
Automata
- A bounded Petri net
- can be modeled as a finite-state machine
- in which nodes of the machine
- represent the reachable states of the net.
- Both are kinds of automata, that is,
- models or simulations of a process.
- Conditions, materials, and actions
- have their own behaviors like living things.
The same
- For many things the thing itself and its simulation are the same.
Twenty-three years after he invented them, Petri described them in his doctoral thesis, Communication with Automata. Like many modeling languages, Petri nets have been extended for a many purposes.
See also in The book of science:
Readings in wikipedia:
Other readings: