3 ms·

Shannon's original paper is still a surprisingly good read: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/sha

• _delirium 15y ago
  Seconded; imo this paper is a pretty good introduction to the basic concepts and motivations of information theory even today. Impressive for a 63-year-old paper.
  • evgen 15y ago
    If you want a reminder of what a stud Shannon was, remember that his masters thesis (A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits) proved that you could use boolean algebra and boolean arithmetic to analyze the circuits and relays used in the telephone networks at the time. It then went one step further and proved that the inverse was also true, you could use relays and switches to perform boolean logic operations -- this was the key insight that made digital electronics possible. Not too bad for work that did not even get him a Ph.D. :)