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Lot 1056
SHANNON, CLAUDE E. 1916-2001. THE FOUNDING OF INFORMATION THEORY.
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Offprint from Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27 (July and October). New York: American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1948.
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Offprint from Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27 (July and October). New York: American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1948.
25 October 2022, 14:00 EDT
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SHANNON, CLAUDE E. 1916-2001.
THE FOUNDING OF INFORMATION THEORY.
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Offprint from Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27 (July and October). New York: American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1948.
4to. Publisher's gray wrappers printed in black and blue, 5-hole punched at edge.
WITH: Notes for "Communication in the Presence of Noise" (Lecture 4, AIEE-IRE series, April 25, 1949). Mimeograph typescript, 5 pp, recto only. Disbound. Minor handling wear and creasing.
Provenance: From the library of Cecilie Froehlich (ownership signature on cover of Bell journal). Froehlich (1900-1992), a professor of electrical engineering at City College in New York, was the first female full professor there and the first woman to head any engineering department in the United States.
FIRST EDITION OF THE PAPER THAT MADE SHANNON FAMOUS FOR THE FOUNDING OF INFORMATION THEORY & WITH NOTES FOR HIS 1949 LECTURE.
This rare separate offprint of the Bell System Technical Journal paper contains Shannon's "grand unified theory for communication," something he had been working toward since 1939. He presents an ingenious method to show systems engineers how to eliminate noise by encoding signals, forever changing the way information was shared and ushering in the field of information theory. "A half century ago, Claude Shannon published his epic paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' This paper [has] had an immense impact on technological progress, and so on life as we now know it. One measure of the greatness of the [paper] is that Shannon's major precept that all communication is essentially digital is now commonplace among the modern digitalia, even to the point where many wonder why Shannon needed to state such an obvious axiom" (Blahut & Hajek). Shannon, on the first page of the paper, uses the term "bit" as a portmantaeu of "binary digit" for the first time in print.
Included with this lot is what appears to be the original lecture notes for Shannon's 1949 speech for the AIEE-IRE lecture series likely collected directly at the lecture by Cecilie Froehlich, who was a professor at City College, New York at the time. No other copies of these notes appear at auction nor in WorldCat. Blahut and Hajek, foreword to the book edition, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998; Annals of the History of Computing 6, 152-55; Hook & Norman Origins of Cyberspace 880; Mount & List Milestones, 65.
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Offprint from Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27 (July and October). New York: American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1948.
4to. Publisher's gray wrappers printed in black and blue, 5-hole punched at edge.
WITH: Notes for "Communication in the Presence of Noise" (Lecture 4, AIEE-IRE series, April 25, 1949). Mimeograph typescript, 5 pp, recto only. Disbound. Minor handling wear and creasing.
Provenance: From the library of Cecilie Froehlich (ownership signature on cover of Bell journal). Froehlich (1900-1992), a professor of electrical engineering at City College in New York, was the first female full professor there and the first woman to head any engineering department in the United States.
FIRST EDITION OF THE PAPER THAT MADE SHANNON FAMOUS FOR THE FOUNDING OF INFORMATION THEORY & WITH NOTES FOR HIS 1949 LECTURE.
This rare separate offprint of the Bell System Technical Journal paper contains Shannon's "grand unified theory for communication," something he had been working toward since 1939. He presents an ingenious method to show systems engineers how to eliminate noise by encoding signals, forever changing the way information was shared and ushering in the field of information theory. "A half century ago, Claude Shannon published his epic paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.' This paper [has] had an immense impact on technological progress, and so on life as we now know it. One measure of the greatness of the [paper] is that Shannon's major precept that all communication is essentially digital is now commonplace among the modern digitalia, even to the point where many wonder why Shannon needed to state such an obvious axiom" (Blahut & Hajek). Shannon, on the first page of the paper, uses the term "bit" as a portmantaeu of "binary digit" for the first time in print.
Included with this lot is what appears to be the original lecture notes for Shannon's 1949 speech for the AIEE-IRE lecture series likely collected directly at the lecture by Cecilie Froehlich, who was a professor at City College, New York at the time. No other copies of these notes appear at auction nor in WorldCat. Blahut and Hajek, foreword to the book edition, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998; Annals of the History of Computing 6, 152-55; Hook & Norman Origins of Cyberspace 880; Mount & List Milestones, 65.
Footnotes
"Shannon's general theory of communication is so natural that it's as if he discovered the universe's laws of communication, rather than inventing them." Tse, David. "How Claude Shannon Invented the Future" in Quanta Magazine, December 22, 2020.