With the development and widespread use of large digital computers, which are switching circuits, there has been an increasing interest in switching circuit theory. Much effort has been spent in designing or synthesizing switching cir¬cuits, but unfortunately many of the procedures now in use are more of an art than a science in that much insight and experience are usually required on the part of the designer. Some systematic design methods have been introduced-but these are only applicable to rather small circuits.nThis thesis developer and presents an algorithm for synthesizing asyn¬chronous sequential switching circuits. The algorithm has certain properties which make it useful find applicable to large switching circuits such as the con¬trol unit of a digital computer. The steps in the algorithm are systematic and simple permitting a solution to be obtained in a relatively short amount of time. The resulting design is not optimum in that the circuit has the minimum number of states or minimum amount of logic, but this is acceptable since, as is pointed out in the thesis, it is in general impossible to find an optimum design in a reasonable amount of time.nThe algorithm was written as a computer program for a Control Data Corp-oration 1604 digital computer in order to verify its capabilities. Solutions to several examples are presented which compare quite well with known optimum results.
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