Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Greatest Genius No One Has Heard Of

A very interesting piece on Claude Shannon, Jr.
In the 1930s, “computer” was a job description: someone, usually a woman of mathematical bent, with an adding machine and a big sheet of columnar paper who performed a rigorous routine of hand calculations, using paper and pencil, slide rules and tables of logarithms. Stone knives and bearskins weren’t involved, but to modern eyes they might as well have been.

Large research organizations and the Department of War had a few special purpose mechanical computers intended to integrate differential equations. Vannevar Bush (who deserves his own article someday) brought a young grad student to MIT to work on the differential analyzer, a relatively advanced version of these...

This young man, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, was named Claude Shannon, Jr. Shannon, while working on the differential analyzer, had the insight that these same computations could be done using combinations of a few simple circuits that performed basic logical operations on true and false values. He described how this could be done, and invented the whole concept of digital circuits, which derive from from Shannon’s thesis on what he called switching theory.

His Master’s thesis.

At about the same time, Alan Turing wrote his series of famous papers on computability; those papers included an idea of how a computer with memory might work, but without Shannon’s switching theory, no one knew how to actually build one.
The story just gets more interesting from there.

2 comments:

socalmike said...

I teach a Digital Electronics class, and I am going to mention him sometime in class. My students are all "fans" of Tesla, and I'm sure they will appreciate Shannon. That was a great read, Darren. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

"At about the same time, Alan Turing wrote his series of famous papers on computability; those papers included an idea of how a computer with memory might work, but without Shannon’s switching theory, no one knew how to actually build one."

Well, except for Charles Babbage. And Konrad Zuse.

I hate articles like this because Claude Shannon is great enough without going over the top. Yes, some people actually knew how to build a computer before Claude Shannon invented switching theory.

Babbage knew "how" to build one, but couldn't actually get the job done. It does appear, however, that his design would have worked. Probably (won't know until someone actually builds one to his design).

Konrad Zuse actually built something that has a good claim to being the first working, programmable, digital (but not electronic!) computer. He finished his Z3 in 1941 and had been working on it and earlier (simpler) machines since 1935 or 1936.

Shannon was great, no doubt about it. But it isn't like if he hadn't existed then we wouldn't have computers and statements like this one: "This one man, Claude Shannon, is directly responsible for computers, the internet, CDs, digital TV, really for digital anything" really seem to overstate things.


-Mark Roulo