As often happens with program collections, LCAU has grown from year to year; three stages of development can probably be distinguished. The first began with an article in Byte magazine which described a four state automaton suitable for use with microcomputers having a color monitor.
As the range of automata covered and the number of characteristics analyzed increased, a more elaborate manual was prepared and the structure of the individual programs was given a more elaborate organization. The collection remained fairly constant for a while, but within the past year several new facilities have been added. These include the addition of disk storage, the incorporation of the REC programming language, and the provisions which were made to work with automata of the Chaté-Manneville class.