arithms in base (equal to the number of available states) two, each p= 0.5 choice called, /og2(0.5) = 1, a bit. Shannon’s 1938 master’s thesis mapped George Boole’s algebraic scheme for doing yes-no, either-or computation onto current switching devices such that circuit closed was “true” and circuit open was “fal

t knowledge from his parents, from the streets around him, his new friends, anywhere. In a library in Calcutta, for instance, he once found a copy of George Boole’s 1854 book “An Investigation Into the Laws of Thought”. Boole invented symbolic logic on those pages and though his instincts were grounded in an age