5 ms·

Vint Cerf savours a life of Claude Shannon

93 points by Osiris30 9y ago

andrewl 9y ago
James Gleick has a good bit about Shannon in his book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood.
- sn9 9y ago
  One of my favorite books! Another great book that includes information on Shannon and provides context to his work at Bell Labs is Gertner's Idea Factory.
valuearb 9y ago
Vint Cerf is a pretty interesting guy as well. Just found out he's responsible for saving Mac users from discoveryd. He got sick and tired of it causing problems, and called Tim Cook.
- Osiris30 9y ago
  Interesting. Do you have a link for this?
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    This anecdote appears to have originated on a German podcast [1] 1: https://www.macwelt.de/news/Vint-Cerf-beschwerte-sich-bei-Cook-ueber-WLAN-9794494.html https://www.macwelt.de/news/Vint-Cerf-beschwerte-sich-bei-Co... (run your adblocker).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
JoeDaDude 9y ago
It's a known fact that Shannon was fascinated by games as a means to study artificial intelligence. He also built many machines to play games. These machines are now in the care of the MIT museum. I compiled a list of his game machines in [1], though I need to fix the links to the pictures at the MIT museum. [1]. https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man-games-and-machines https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man...
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  One of the comments to the article you link to says: "Claude Shannon was known as a strong chess player, and he was the first to not only propose that a computer could play Chess, but to also provide details on how that could be done. In his paper Programming a Computer for Playing Chess published in 1950, he describes how a computer could play chess using the minimax algorithm and a predesigned evaluation function. In so doing, he laid the foundation for virtually all abstract computer game programs used today." But according to chronology in the Computers and Chess Wikipedia article, in 1948 "Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics describes how a chess program could be developed using a depth-limited minimax search with an evaluation function."[1] Even before that, in 1941, "Predating comparable work by at least a decade, Konrad Zuse develops computer chess algorithms in his Plankalkül programming formalism. Because of the circumstances of the Second World War, however, they were not published, and did not come to light, until the 1970s." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_and_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_and_chess
  - billforsternz 9y ago
    I immediately thought of a nice picture in one of Edward Lasker's wonderful autobiographical chess books. Happily google image search retrieves it; https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Claude+Shannon https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Claude+Shannon If I remember correctly, this relay based machine mates with king and rook versus bare king (significantly harder than king and queen versus bare king)
    - JoeDaDude 9y ago
      Thank you, great picture! Shannon's chess playing machine now resides at the MIT Museum. I was able to include MIT Museum links in the referenced BGG list. See MIT's page about the machine here: https://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?term=Shannon&module=objects&type=keyword&x=0&y=0&kv=86329&record=24&page=1&kv=75597&record=9&module=objects https://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?term=Shannon&module=obj...
    - billforsternz 9y ago
sohkamyung 9y ago
Excerpts from the book can be found at this IEEE Spectrum article [1]. Definitely an interesting book to read. [1] "A Man in a Hurry: Claude Shannon’s New York Years" [ http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/a-man-in-a-hurry-claude-shannons-new-york-years http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/a-man-in-a-hurry-... ]

93 points by Osiris30 9y ago

andrewl 9y ago

James Gleick has a good bit about Shannon in his book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood.

sn9 9y ago
One of my favorite books! Another great book that includes information on Shannon and provides context to his work at Bell Labs is Gertner's Idea Factory.

valuearb 9y ago

Vint Cerf is a pretty interesting guy as well. Just found out he's responsible for saving Mac users from discoveryd. He got sick and tired of it causing problems, and called Tim Cook.

Osiris30 9y ago
Interesting. Do you have a link for this?
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  This anecdote appears to have originated on a German podcast [1] 1: https://www.macwelt.de/news/Vint-Cerf-beschwerte-sich-bei-Cook-ueber-WLAN-9794494.html https://www.macwelt.de/news/Vint-Cerf-beschwerte-sich-bei-Co... (run your adblocker).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

JoeDaDude 9y ago

It's a known fact that Shannon was fascinated by games as a means to study artificial intelligence. He also built many machines to play games. These machines are now in the care of the MIT museum. I compiled a list of his game machines in [1], though I need to fix the links to the pictures at the MIT museum. [1]. https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man-games-and-machines https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man...

pmoriarty 9y ago
One of the comments to the article you link to says: "Claude Shannon was known as a strong chess player, and he was the first to not only propose that a computer could play Chess, but to also provide details on how that could be done. In his paper Programming a Computer for Playing Chess published in 1950, he describes how a computer could play chess using the minimax algorithm and a predesigned evaluation function. In so doing, he laid the foundation for virtually all abstract computer game programs used today." But according to chronology in the Computers and Chess Wikipedia article, in 1948 "Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics describes how a chess program could be developed using a depth-limited minimax search with an evaluation function."[1] Even before that, in 1941, "Predating comparable work by at least a decade, Konrad Zuse develops computer chess algorithms in his Plankalkül programming formalism. Because of the circumstances of the Second World War, however, they were not published, and did not come to light, until the 1970s." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_and_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_and_chess
- billforsternz 9y ago
  I immediately thought of a nice picture in one of Edward Lasker's wonderful autobiographical chess books. Happily google image search retrieves it; https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Claude+Shannon https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Claude+Shannon If I remember correctly, this relay based machine mates with king and rook versus bare king (significantly harder than king and queen versus bare king)
  - JoeDaDude 9y ago
    Thank you, great picture! Shannon's chess playing machine now resides at the MIT Museum. I was able to include MIT Museum links in the referenced BGG list. See MIT's page about the machine here: https://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?term=Shannon&module=objects&type=keyword&x=0&y=0&kv=86329&record=24&page=1&kv=75597&record=9&module=objects https://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?term=Shannon&module=obj...
  - billforsternz 9y ago

sohkamyung 9y ago

Excerpts from the book can be found at this IEEE Spectrum article [1]. Definitely an interesting book to read. [1] "A Man in a Hurry: Claude Shannon’s New York Years" [ http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/a-man-in-a-hurry-claude-shannons-new-york-years http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/a-man-in-a-hurry-... ]