Claude Shannon

Introduction

Claude Elwood Shannon is considered as the founding father of electronic communications age. He is an American mathematical engineer, whose work on technical and engineering problems within the communications industry, laying the groundwork for both the computer industry and telecommunications. After Shannon noticed the similarity between Boolean algebra and the telephone switching circuits, he applied Boolean algebra to electrical systems at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in 1940. Later he joined the staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1942. While working at Bell Laboratories, he formulated a theory explaining the communication of information and worked on the problem of most efficiently transmitting information. The mathematical theory of communication was the climax of Shannon's mathematical and engineering investigations. The concept of entropy was an important feature of Shannon's theory, which he demonstrated to be equivalent to a shortage in the information content (a degree of uncertainty) in a message.

Background & Family

Claude Elwood Shannon was born in Gaylord, Michigan, on April 30, 1916, to Claude Elwood and Mabel Wolf Shannon. Shannon's father, Claude, was a judge at Gaylord which was a little town of about three thousands in Michigan. Although he didn't work in the field of mathematics, he was clever mathematically and knew what he was talking about. As for his mother, Mabel, who was the principal of the high school in Gaylord. Even though there wasn't much scientific influence from Shannon's father, most of it came from his grandfather. Shannon's grandfather was an inventor and a farmer. He invented the washing machine along with many others farming machinery. On March 27, 1949, Shannon married Mary Elizabeth Moore and together they have three children; Robert James, Andrew Moore, and Margarita Catherine.

Invention

Just a few miles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was Shannon's large house. The house is filled with musical instruments such as five pianos and 30 other instruments, from piccolos to trumpets. The chess-playing machines include one that moves the pieces with a three-fingered arm, beep and makes wry comments. A chair lift that he built to take his three children 600 feet down to the lakeside has been taken down now that they are grown. Shannon's lifelong fascination with balance and controlled instability has led him to design a unicycle with an off-center wheel to keep the rider steady while juggling. Shannon love to juggle since he was a kid. In his toy room is a machine with soft beanbag hands that juggle steel balls. His juggling masterpiece is a tiny stage on which three clowns juggle 11 rings, 7 balls, and 5 clubs, all driven by an invisible mechanism of clockwork

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