Its CLAUDE SHANNON (1916-2001) who laid the theoretical groundwork that made modern digital computer pass.
He not only inaugurated the field of information theory but also the object measure of information and described the digital code that would make it possible for engineering to compress and accurately transmit information.
“THE INTERNET ITSELF-RESTS ON THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATION THAT CLAUDE GAVE”
When the research started that turned into the first biography of shannon. It was impressive to discover the wide range of hobbies and side pursuits he maintained alongside his scientific work- jazz clarinet,amateur poetry and juggling to name just a few. Like many scientists of his caliber, shannon loved chess as well.
After an astonishing 42 moves, Shannon tipped his king over and conceded the game. Nevertheless, lasting dozens of moves against Botvinnik, considered among the most gifted chess players of all time, earned shannons lifelong bragging rights.
Nearly half century before deep blue defeated the WHC, Shannon performed the value of chess as a sort of training ground for intelligent machines and their makers. Completed in 1949, the machine was referred to as both Endgame and Caissac (after the fictional “patron goddess of chess,” Caïssa). As the name suggested, Shannon’s machine could only handle endgames, managing no more than six pieces at a time.
More than 150 relay switches were used to calculate a move, processing power that allowed the machine to decide within a respectable 10 to 15 seconds. The relays were concealed in a box decorated with the pattern of a chess board; once they had chosen a move, a series of lights would indicate it to the user.
Simple as it was, it was one of the world’s very first chess-playing computers, a distant ancestor of Deep Blue. It was also an illustration of Shannon’s eagerness to build with his hands what he had dreamed up on paper.
For Shannon, both the chess paper and the chess machine addressed more enticing questions, as well. How should we think about “thinking machines”? Do machines think in the way we do? Do we want them to? What were an artificial brain’s strengths and weaknesses?
Shannon gave a measured answer: “If we regard thinking as a property of external actions rather than internal method, the machine is surely thinking.”
But he would, over time, grow more positive that artificial brains would surpass organic brains. Decades would pass before programmers would build a grandmaster-level chess computer on the foundations that Shannon helped lay, but he was certain that such an outcome was inevitable. The thought that a machine could never exceed its creator was “just foolish logic, wrong and incorrect logic.” He went on: “You can make a thing that is smarter than yourself. Smartness in this game is made partly of time and speed. I can build something which can operate much faster than my neurons.”
There was nothing more mysterious to it:
I think man is a machine. No, I am not joking, I think man is a machine of a very complex sort, different from a computer, i.e., different in organization. But it could be easily reproduced—it has about 10 billion nerve cells, i.e., 1010 neurons. And if you model each one of these with electronic equipment it will act like a human brain.
All of this reflection on the theory and practice of chess helped to make Shannon, in 1965, a formidable opponent for a grandmaster. But that wasn’t the only way his Russia trip was a success.
Arriving at his hotel room on the first night of the trip, Shannon complained aloud when he found that the lock on the door was broken. A locksmith instantly appeared—leading him to suspect that the room had been bugged by the Soviet authorities. His next move was to complain aloud that he had never received the royalties for the Russian edition of his published work—and a check materialized the next day.
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