The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age
Paul J. Nahin
Abstract
Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use—from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? This book combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras—mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon—advanced Boolean logic and became founding ... More
Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use—from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? This book combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras—mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon—advanced Boolean logic and became founding fathers of the electronic communications age. The book takes readers from fundamental concepts to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of modern digital machines, in order to explore computing and its possible limitations in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Keywords:
Boolean algebra,
Boolean logic,
George Boole,
Claude Shannon,
electronic communications,
communications age
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780691176000 |
Published to Princeton Scholarship Online: May 2018 |
DOI:10.23943/princeton/9780691176000.001.0001 |