I was reading about Alan Turing last night, after going to see some good music (Mark Schlack and his John Paine All Stars). I wanted to refer to Claude Shannon, and recalled an obit/appreciation I wrote for ITWorld when he died. It was hard to find... so I am fair using it in great part here just in case and for reference. ... Shannon was born in Petoskey, Mich., and grew up in Gaylord, Mich. He worked as a messenger for Western Union while in Gaylord High School, and attended college at MIT, where he was a member of Tau Beta Pi. Although the algebra of digital binary bits was first uncovered by mathematician George Boole in the mid-19th century, it was Shannon who saw the value of applying that form of logic to electronic communications. As a student of Vannevar Bush's at MIT in the 1930s, he worked on the differential analyzer, perhaps the greatest mechanical (analog) calculator. His paper, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits," which led to a l...
