The Logician and the Engineer

How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age

Paul Nahin, Paul J. Nahin

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780691176000
  9780691151007
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400844654
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies
• Index: Mathematics

How two pioneers of math and technology ushered in the computer revolution

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? In The Logician and the Engineer, Paul Nahin 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. Nahin 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 What You Need to Know to Read This Book
• 2 Introduction
• 3 George Boole and Claude Shannon: Two Mini-Biographies
• 4 Boolean Algebra
• 5 Logical Switching Circuits
• 6 Boole, Shannon, and Probability
• 7 Some Combinatorial Logic Examples
• 8 Sequential-State Digital Circuits
• 9 Turing Machines
• 10 Beyond Boole and Shannon
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Acknowledgments
• Index