Προσθήκη στα αγαπημένα
Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use—from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? In The Logician and the Engineer, Paul Nahin combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras—mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon—advanced Boolean logic and became founding fathers of the electronic communications age. Nahin takes readers from fundamental concepts to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of modern digital machines, in order to explore computing and its possible limitations in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Preface xi
1 What You Need to Know to Read This Book 1
Notes and References 5
2 Introduction 6
Notes and References 14
3 George Boole and Claude Shannon: Two Mini-Biographies 17
4 Boolean Algebra 43
5 Logical Switching Circuits 67
6 Boole, Shannon, and Probability 88
7 Some Combinatorial Logic Examples 114
8 Sequential-State Digital Circuits 139
9 Turing Machines 161
10 Beyond Boole and Shannon 176
Epilogue
For the Future: The Anti-Amphibological Machine 210
Appendix
Fundamental Electric Circuit Concepts 219
Acknowledgments 223
Index 225
Περιγραφή
Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use—from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? In The Logician and the Engineer, Paul Nahin combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras—mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon—advanced Boolean logic and became founding fathers of the electronic communications age. Nahin takes readers from fundamental concepts to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of modern digital machines, in order to explore computing and its possible limitations in the twenty-first century and beyond.