Fractals have always been interesting to people who like to explore but getting your hands on a program that will let you do that has always been a problem.

The link at the bottom of this page allows you to download a copy of my mandelbrot program which is postcardware (you send me a post card to license it)

My Fractal Program will let you explore not only the Mandelbrot Set (z->z²) but also (z->z³) and (z->z⁴) as well as a number of more esoteric fractals. Exploration is not limited to the x : i plane but extends to the y : z plane as well giving you Julia sets and Fatou Dusts reflecting the earlier work of the mathematicians Gaston Julia and Pierre Fatou whilst extending it into higher order mappings.

Existing between the -1 and +1 in four dimensions, the ginger bread man fractal figures of the Mandelbrot set (based on two of the planes, the x plane and the imaginary plane) have become familiar to us all.
Mandelbrot's work was a result of trying to unify the work of Gaston Julia and Pierre Fatou during the First World War. The mathematics is based upon repetitive mapping of points in the imaginary plane.
The imaginary plane was invented to explain away problems in expressing time in relativity as imaginary numbers were the only solution to the four dimensional Pythagorean solution.

The screen shot on the right shows the history selected for a particular display with the previous screens and the locations and magnitudes displayed. You can select from a number of palettes and select julia sets from a point on the screen - the history shows you that as well.

Context sensitive help is always available by clicking the mouse in the top left corner of the screen or by pressing [F1]. You do not need a mouse to use this program as all of the operations may be performed by using the keyboard - instructions are in the context sensitive help.

It does not really matter whether or not you understand the mathematics of the pictures, they are pretty enough on their own.

The program requires only a basic PC configuration:

It is a DOS program so it will run quicker than any equivalent Windows Program but I can compile to optimise for different processor types (the verision that you can download is 32 bit so you can use it on a 386/486/Pentium) so if you want to run it on a 286 then write to me specifying which processor you need it to run on:- 286 (or even 8086 if you have a VGA for it:-).

The technique for zooming in is by defining an area with the mouse so there are no dreadful sets of coordinates to remember (if you really want, you can select an area using the coordinate method). Each zoom is stored and files can be saved and loaded up later so it is not entirely futile.

You can obtain a copy either by downloading it direct or by asking me to send it as an e-mail attachment.

Over 4,000 downloads.
To go to the download page, click here.
mandel.zip 135,445 Bytes
MD5 hash = 63e0727df2ab827d331ea5fca879b4de