MIT Professor Emeritus Claude Shannon is known as the father of digital communications and information theory. But did you know that he published his groundbreaking paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", in 1948? Shannon was so far ahead of his time that it was almost 35 years before his theorem was applied in communications technology.  Shannon showed how to calculate the maximum rate at which data can be sent over a channel with zero error. He called this rate the "channel capacity", but it's more widely known now as the "Shannon Limit". Teachers: Students will use Shannon's Theorem in the AAPT learning module "Analog-To-Digital".

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The contributions of 19th Century mathematician George Boole in the field of logic cannot be overstated. Determined to find a way to encode logical arguments into a language that could be manipulated and solved mathematically, Boole came up with a type of linguistic algebra, now known as Boolean logic. His approach is based on a binary system that functions with only two objects:  "yes/no", "true/false", "on/off", "zero/one". His work was criticized and ignored by colleagues. Almost 70 years later, MIT's Claude Shannon made a major breakthrough by realizing that Boole's work laid the framework for relay circuits. Now, Boolean Logic underpins all digital devices. This readable tutorial is appropriate for HS students.

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17th Century German philosopher/mathematician Gottfried Leibniz is credited with the early development of the binary number system. This easy-to-read tutorial explores the struggles faced by Leibniz, who was also the first to publish a theory of calculus. Like Isaac Newton, Leibniz was a member of the Royal Society in London. A heated rivalry developed over which man actually discovered the field of calculus, with Newton given eventual credit. Ironically, it was Leibniz development of "on/off" logic phases that is remembered as his greatest triumph.

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