The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon

Sending a message involved turning it into varying pulses of voltage along a wire, which could be measured at the other end and interpreted back into words. During the second world war, Shannon worked on codes and methods of sending messages efficiently and securely over long distances, ideas that became the seeds for his information theory.īefore information theory, remote communication was done using analogue signals. His workplace was the celebrated research and development arm of the Bell Telephone Company, the US's main provider of telephone services until the 1980s when it was broken up because of its monopolistic position. When anyone talks about the information revolution of the last few decades, it is Shannon's idea of information that they are talking about.Ĭlaude Shannon was a mathematician and electronic engineer working at Bell Labs in the US in the middle of the 20th century. It was the start of the science of 'information theory', a set of ideas that has allowed us to build the internet, digital computers and telecommunications systems. An elegant way to work out how efficient a code could be, it turned 'information' from a vague word related to how much someone knew about something into a precise mathematical unit that could be measured, manipulated and transmitted. T his equation was published in the 1949 book The Mathematical Theory of Communication, co-written by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver.

The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon