In July and October 1948 the American mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon of Bell Labs published A Mathematical Theory of Communication in two parts in the Bell System Technical Journal. He showed that information can be measured, in a unit he called the bit, binary digit, and that every communication channel has a maximum capacity, below which messages can be sent with arbitrarily few errors using suitable coding. The theory underlies digital communication, compression, cryptography, data storage, and the internet. Shannon had already shown in his 1937 master's thesis how Boolean algebra could be used to design switching circuits, the basis of digital computers.
Before and after
- 1948Founding of Organization of American States
- 1948Founding of International Maritime Organization
- 1948Nakba
- 1948People's Daily
- 1948Claude Shannon founds information theory
- 7 January 1948Birth of Ichirō Mizuki
- 30 January 1948Death of Mahatma Gandhi
- 11 February 1948Death of Sergei Eisenstein
- 16 February 1948Discovery of Miranda
More in Science & technology
- 25 April 1953Watson and Crick publish the structure of DNA
- 1971Email
- 1973Mobile phone
- 20 November 1985Creation of Microsoft Windows
- August 2003Discovery of moscovium
- 2006Discovery of nihonium
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.