This is my #linocut portrait of Claude Shannon (1916-2001), #mathematician, electrical #engineer, computer scientist & cryptographer credited with laying the foundations for the Information Age. It shows him in front of binary numbers & with his electromechanical mouse Theseus & its maze. Though partially behind him, the binary numbers are the standard ASCII code for "CLAUDESHANNON".
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During WWII he worked in cryptanalysis for US national defence, doing fundamental work on codebreaking & secure telecommunications, & writing a paper which is considered one of the foundational pieces of modern symmetric-key cryptography.
His ‘48 paper laid the foundations for information theory. It was important to the invention of the CD, the internet, mobile phones & even our understanding of blackholes. He introduced the term "bit," invented the signal-flow graph & co-invented 🧵3/
pulse-code modulation & 1st wearable computer.
In ‘50, he designed & built a learning machine, with his mathematician wife & collaborator Betty Shannon. They built an adjustable maze with sensors which followed the path of an electromechanical mouse whimsically named Theseus which could search corridors until it found a target (the penny in my print). Then, the mouse could be moved to anywhere in the maze. If the location was known, it would go immediately to the target.🧵4/5
If unknown, the mouse would search until it found a known position, adding this knowledge to its memory, & proceed from there. Thus it could eventually find the most direct route. This is the 1st known artificial learning device.
He was a professor at MIT from ‘56-‘78. A co-organizer of the 1956 Dartmouth workshop, his work was also foundational for AI. 🧵5/5
Ele Willoughby, PhD
Dave bauer