The Story of Hacksburg's Logo

The Grid

The grid layout is based on the original sixteen squares of the Town of Blacksburg.

In 1772, Samuel Black purchased 600 acres in the Draper’s Meadow area; however, he did not inhabit the land. When he passed away in 1792, he split the land evenly between his two sons, John and William, each of them receiving 300 acres. John’s land would evolve into Virginia Tech’s campus while William’s land would become the Town of Blacksburg, of which much of the original town exists today.[1]

You can go on a walking tour of the original 16 squares by clicking Here

The Dots

The dots are based off Conway's Game of Life.

Conway's Game of Life , is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. It is Turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other Turing machine.

The pattern represented in Hacksburg's logo is the B-heptomino