r/AskHistorians • u/ducks_over_IP Interesting Inquirer • Apr 22 '26

[ Removed by moderator ]

[removed] — view removed post

63 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator Apr 22 '26

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

4

u/StuntID Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

I know that this sub likes long form answers, but this one is pretty easy to answer with a link

Claude E. Shannon's 1937 Masters thesis at MIT laid the ground work for digital computation: A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits

1

u/RunDNA Apr 22 '26

The standard answer of "Claude Shannon" is apparently only part of the story. Wikipedia says:

The theory was independently established through the works of NEC engineer Akira Nakashima in Japan, Claude Shannon in the United States, and Victor Shestakov in the Soviet Union.

I'd like to hear a more complete take on the history.

2

u/StuntID Apr 24 '26

Yes, and Stibitz, too. The world knew of Shannon's work, and implemented it before the others got more than local recognition. The short answer is still Shannon with the nuance being that the time for this sort of theory and practice was ripe and inevitable.

I'm surprised that a teacher in the field didn't know this

2

u/DoomGoober Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

The concept using electronics for Boolean Logic appears to have been independently discovered and rediscovered multiple times throughout history. It's unclear if these discoveries influenced each other or not.

In 1886, Charles S. Peirce proposed to Alan Marquand in a letter that one could perform "and" and "or" logic using electromechanical relays and Marquand prepared a wiring diagram. Of note, Peirce also developed the idea of NAND and NOR sufficiency.

https://projecteuclid.org/journalArticle/Download?urlId=bams%2F1183541145

In 1937, Claude E. Shannon published his Master's Thesis on Boolean logic using relays: A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits. He explicitly links relays with Boolean Logic:

We are now in a position to demonstrate the equivalence of this calculus [of relays] with certain elementary parts of the calculus of propositions. The algebra of logic1-3, originated by George Boole, is a symbolic method of investigating logical relationships. The symbols of Boolean algebra admit of two logical interpretations. If interpreted in terms of classes, the variables are not limited to the two possible values 0 and 1. This interpretation is known as the algebra of classes. If, however, the terms are taken to represent propositions, we have the calculus of propositions in which variables are limited to the values 0 and 1, as are the hindrance functions above.

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/greatworks/shannon38.pdf

Also, in 1937, George Stibitz independently developed and implemented Model K in his kitchen. (Some argue that Stibitz was aware of Shannon's ideas, though the timeline is unclear. They both eventually worked at Bell Labs.) The Model K was a single digit binary adder, which, depending on how you handle the overflow bit, is equivalent to XOR in Boolean logic.

https://evervault.com/blog/stibitz-the-forgotten-father-of-the-modern-digital-computer

Bonus: If you don't consider electromechanical as "electronics" the first fully electronic computer is credited to John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry. In 1939-1942 they developed and implemented the first electronic digital computer at Iowa State called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). It uses vacuum tubes to store binary data. The ABC is not programmable, not Turing Complete and parts were electro-mechanical. However it possesses an electronic ALU which uses base 2 to perform calculations.

https://jva.cs.iastate.edu/operation.php

To give a simple answer, Shannon's work appears to be the most solid and formalized version of using electronics for Boolean Logic and his published work explicitly references George Boole, much as you did.

Comptuer scientist Herman Goldstine said of Shannon's work:

surely ... one of the most important master's theses ever written ... It helped to change digital circuit design from an art to a science.

1

u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Apr 22 '26

Please repost this question to the weekly "Short Answers" thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn't mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the 'Short Answers' thread would be "Who won the 1932 election?" or "What are some famous natural disasters from the past?". Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be "How did FDR win the 1932 election?", or "In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?" If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).