Chronological list
M.G. Kendall & B. Babington Smith: "Randomness
and Random Sampling Numbers." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society,
Vol. 101, No. 1 (1938), pp. 147-166.
M.G. Kendall & B. Babington Smith: "Second Paper on Random
Sampling Numbers." Supplement to the Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1939), pp. 51-61.
[Semi-automatic
electro-mechanical device. In a dark room, digits on a rotating
disc (250 rpm) move along a pointer. At arbitrary moments,
a neon light is momentarily switched on; the number next to the
pointer is written down.]
RAND Corporation: A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal
Deviates. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1955.
[This
project (started in 1947) used an analog electronic random
number generator, which read the least significant digits from
an arbitrarily gated pulse counter. (The results showed statistically
significant deviations from randomness. Further randomization was
needed to derive the final tables.)]
Z. Pawlak: "Flip-flop as a generator of
random binary digits." M.T.A.C., 10 (1956),
pp. 28-30
Ernie 1 (1957) used the least significant digits in the amplitude
measurement of a signal though a neon tube.
F. Sterzer: "Random number generator using subharmonic
oscillators."
Rev. of Scientific Instruments, 30 (1959), pp. 241-243.
O. Miyatake, H. Inoue & Y. Yoshizawa: "Generation of
physical random numbers." Mathematica Japonica, 20 (1975),
pp. 207-217.
J.L. Chasse: Sex distributions in the 556 eggs laid
by a single "Bombyx Mori" female: biological generation of binary
random numbers. (In French.) Rivista di Stastistica Applicata, 11 (1978),
pp. 180-190.
O. Miyatake et al.: "On the generation and properties
of physical random numbers." Mathematica Japonica, 24 (1979),
pp. 369-376.
H. Inoue et al.: "Random numbers generated by a physical
device." Applied Statistics, 32 (1983), pp.
115-120.
Don Davis, Ross Ihaka & Philip Fenstermacher: "Cryptographic
Randomness from Air Turbulence in Disk Drives." Proceedings
of Crypto 94, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
No. 839, 1994.
ComScire: PCQNG,
1995-2006. [Uses CPU core clock jitter.]
John Walker: HotBits,
1996. [Uses radio-active decay.]
Bob Mende, Landon Curt Noll & Sanjev Sisodiya: lavarand,
1996.
[Uses the digital image of a lava-lamp to produce
seeds for a pseudo-random number generator. It soon turned out,
however, that the presence of the lava-lamp was completely immaterial:
the digital camera produced just as much noise without any input.]
Mads Haahr: random.org,
1998. [Uses radio noise.]
Terry Ritter: Random
Noise Sources, 1999. [Zener diode noise; FM radio noise.]
Rolf Freitag's devices RW2,
RW3 and RW4 combine random numbers derived
from the noise of several Schmitt-triggers. (Patent
application: 1999)
Intel's random
number generator (included in the Pentium III and VIA microprocessors),
1999. [Based on thermal noise.]
Landon Curt Noll & Simon Cooper: LavaRnd,
2000.
[CCD camera-chip digitizes luminance fluctuations
in a sealed can; uses some postprocessing to obtain statistical
randomness]
T. Jennewein, U. Achleitner, G. Weihs, H. Weinfurter & A. Zeilinger: "A
fast and compact quantum random number generator", Rev.
Sci. Instr. 71 (2000), pp. 1675-1680.
Ernie
4 (2001) uses thermal noise.
id Quantique: Quantis,
2001.
[Uses the quantum-uncertainty in the transmission
of single photons through a semi-transparent medium, with postprocessing
for "unbiasing".]
John S. Denker: High-Entropy
Randomness Generator, 2002.
[Software which generates random
numbers on the basis of thermal noise on the computer's soundcard.]
A.
Seznec & N. Sendrier: "HAVEGE: a user-level
software heuristic for generating empirically strong random numbers", ACM
Transaction on Modeling and Computer Simulations (TOMACS), 13,
4 (October 2003).
[Software which generates unpredictable numbers
on the basis of the changing states of the various hardware components
of the computer that it runs on (instruction and data caches, translation
buffers, L2 cache, branch prediction structures).]
M. Stipcevic: "Fast nondeterministic random bit generation
based on weakly correlated physical events." Rev. Sci.
Instr.
75 (2004), pp. 4442-4449.
[QRBG 121 random number generator:
Uses time-intervals between semiconductor photon emissions.]
Several commercial products using Zener diode noise
are now (2007) on the market. For instance: the Orion
Random Number Generator, the HG400 by Random,
the SG100, SG200 and R300A by Protego.
Chance 