George Spencer Brown’s “Design with the NOR”

George Spencer Brown, a polymath and author of Laws of Form, brought together mathematics, electronics, engineering and philosophy to form an unlikely bond. This book investigates Design with NOR, the title of the yet unpublished 1961 typescript by Spencer Brown. The typescript formed through the author's experiences as technical engineer and developer of a new form of switching algebra for Mullard Equipment Ltd., a British manufacturer of electronic components, and is published here for the first time. Related essays contextualise the typescript drawing on a variety backgrounds from mathematics and engineering to philosophy and sociology, and thus invite readers to a reverse-engineering of both the form and its laws.