Claude Shannon

FIRST EDITION OF THE PAPER THAT MADE SHANNON FAMOUS FOR THE FOUNDING OF INFORMATION THEORY.

The original journal appearance of Shannon's "grand unified theory for communication," which he had been working toward since 1939. He reduces all communication – from an in-person conversation to broadcast to a phone call, etc. - to a formula: Information source delivers the message through a transmitter, the signal travels to the receiver whereby noise is introduced, from the receiver the message is delivered to its destination. Shannon then presents an ingenious method to show systems engineers how to eliminate noise by encoding signals, forever changing the way information was shared and ushering in the field of information theory. "A half century ago, Claude Shannon published his epic paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' This paper [has] had an immense impact on technological progress, and so on life as we now know it. One measure of the greatness of the [paper] is that Shannon's major precept that all communication is essentially digital is now commonplace among the modern digitalia, even to the point where many wonder why Shannon needed to state such an obvious axiom" (Blahut & Hajek). Shannon, on the first page of the paper, uses the term "bit" as a portmanteau of "binary digit" for the first time in print. Blahut and Hajek, foreword to the book edition, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998; Annals of the History of Computing 6, 152-55; Gertner, Jon. The Idea Factory. [New York]: Penguin, [2012]; Hook & Norman Origins of Cyberspace 880; Mount & List Milestones in Science and Technology, 65.