The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age

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.

• A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
• In Praise of Simple Physics: The Science and Mathematics behind Everyday Questions (Princeton Puzzlers)
• An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics)
• Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt: And Other Intriguing Stories of Mathematical Physics
• The Life and Work of George Boole: A Prelude to the Digital Age
• A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
• Number-Crunching: Taming Unruly Computational Problems from Mathematical Physics to Science Fiction
• In Praise of Simple Physics: The Science and Mathematics behind Everyday Questions (Princeton Puzzlers)
• The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
• Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction