It does and with acknowledgement that Conway's life was then the best known example of 2D cellular automata. However, Conway's life CA was not the focus of the article hence limited references to it. There was an increasing of interest at the time of the article on self similarity, emergence, self organization and mapping of CAs with dynamical systems theory and different classes of CAs (focus of article) beyond the game of life. A number of researchers at the time were interested in using CAs as a means of simulating certain dynamical systems e.g. fluids and weather. However generally the early work of CA pioneers including Stanislaw Ulam, Kondrad Zuse, Art Burks et all was not as widely known as it is now and certainly John Conway's life along with the works of Edward Frenkin, Norman Magulis et al and articles such as these by Stephen Wolfram helped generated renewed interest in the field. Without articles like this one I am not sure we would have seen sufficient interest to publish discoveries such as Christopher Langton's wonderful Loops and Ant only a few years later. If you are interested in CAs its a good article and worth reading.
