A CHESS-PLAYING MACHINE

by Claude Shannon

Paperback

Published January 1, 1950

About the author

Claude Elwood Shannon, Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1940; M.S. Electrical Engineering, MIT, 1937; B.S., Electrical Engineering & Mathematics, University of Michigan, 1936), was a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer often referred to as "the father of information theory." His Master's Thesis, which went largely unappreciated for years, demonstrated that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical, numerical relationship, and thereby solve any problem solvable by Boolean algebra; this eventually provided the underpinning for all digital computing.