“A Mind Play”
-Claude Shannon invented ‘the information age’.
-the idea that geniuses are not religious just smart (similar idea as other author’s works we have been reading in this course)
-Info as an idea, the medium and meaning didn’t matter
-only the essence matter
-Bush put Shannon in charge of operating the Differential analyzer, he was fascinated by the switches
This machine’s inner workings: Binary choices, works like a brain
-Systems of transmitted info through various mediums like radio
-Information Theory-a mathematical code, a sequence of bits made up info lead to the Internet
-he figured out how to digitize info to send it from one point to another
-Using codes to communicate in areas that the phone company didn’t service (occurred in Gaylord Michigan and other cities in the U.S)
-Thompson invented Harmonic Analyzer: used a differential equation to calculate the location for shooting shells at enemies during WW1(an equation solving machine)
– Hannibal Ford created the Integrator: the missing part of the Harmonic Analyzer to assist with this machine called (measured currents under shells)
-Bush created the first Analog Computer as well as the Profile Tracer
-all inventions discussed in this book working models of a physical world
-I only found a small portion of this book to be helpful, most of it seems to be a biography of Claude Shannon, the background and major accomplishments of another important scientist (that created major inventions), which is of no interest to me