WEBVTT - Who was Claude Shannon? 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.320 stuff Works dot com. Hayley and welcome to text Stuff. 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:17.560 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Folk Oban, and today 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.479 we wanted to talk about a an important figure in 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:25.960 tech who often I think is overlooked. H not on purpose, 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:31.000 it's just he himself was a very kind of conclusive 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:33.240 is probably the wrong word. They didn't seek the spotlight. 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:36.200 He became a very private person. And also the work 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.040 that he was doing was technical enough in nature that 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:42.080 I think it's a little bit less dynamic as explained 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.400 to the general public. Yeah, it's a little more tricky 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.160 than saying this person built this thing which changed the world. 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:49.280 This is the person who came up with the idea 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:51.280 that the things that were built that changed the world 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.720 were built upon Did that make sense, I'd have to 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:58.400 diagram the sentence. We're talking about Claude Shannon Shannon Folks, 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:02.000 the father of in anmation theory right, also known as 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:07.560 the father of the electronic communication age, and his full 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:12.200 name Claude Ellwood Shannon. Very important person he's been. He's 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:16.120 been compared to, you know, some some pretty impressive, big, 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:21.440 basic big people like Einstein, Yeah, Einstein being one of them, 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:24.320 and you might say, well, whoa you know Einstein, Like, 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.880 Einstein's name has become synonymous with just the concept of genius, 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:32.399 like to the point where we use it in phrases 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.600 where we're being you know, a little a little condescenating. Yeah, 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.839 way to go Einstein, that kind of thing. But as 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.920 you'll see when we go through this this episode and 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:46.640 explain what Claude Shannon did and his his contributions to technology, 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:49.680 as well as just kind of his wacky personality, you'll 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:54.120 really kind of see how that that applies. So exactly 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.720 who was he and what did he do? When was 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:05.360 this guy born? He was born in nineteen sixteen in Potaski. Yeah. Yeah, 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.000 his father was a probate judge and his mother was 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.440 a high school principle. He also did have some mildly 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.640 famous family. A very distant cousin of his kind of 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.400 made a name for himself, Yeah, for killing an elephant 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:23.440 with electricity, Thomas Edison. He did a few other things too, Yeah, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:27.520 that's the requisite doing from the internet. Thomas Edison obviously 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.880 did many, many important things, some of them not remotely 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:36.320 involving putting an animal to death with electricity. Yeah, thet 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.360 the large majority of which so kill an elephant once. Yeah, 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.320 I know, you just sticks with you right. Well. As 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:49.079 a boy, Claude Shannon became interested in electronics and began 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.359 experimenting with different stuff. He was just curious about how 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.200 things work and how to build them himself. He built 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.239 a working model of an airplane. Pretty impressive. Think I 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.160 think he was born in nineteen sixteen. You didn't have 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.480 airplanes for very long. They were pretty new. Yeah, they 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:07.400 were brand new back in the early twentieth century. And 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:11.760 he also reportedly made a working telegraph system that they 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.920 set up between his bedroom and a friend's bedroom. His 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:17.280 friend lived half a mile away, and it was all 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:19.839 made out of fencing wire. Yeah, so he could all 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.760 but I mean the wire itself. Yeah, he could actually 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.320 end up sending messages to his friend have a mile away. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.080 He was also really into radio circuits and built a 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:32.480 radio controlled model boat. Yeah, so very much that. Yeah. Yeah, 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:36.360 this is this is the growing world of radio technology 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:39.760 and the growing world of communications technology. So he was 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.080 interested in it as a kid. Now a little bit 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:45.839 later on, when he was a teenager, he got work 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.840 as a basic mechanic in a drug store, running a 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.880 fix it shop in a drug store, because that's that 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.400 was like the center of town. Yeah, where you go 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:57.480 and you go and get your your chocolate malt and 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.280 your your your fan fixed. You know, it's a one 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:05.960 stop shop. He attended an Arbor College, where he studied 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:10.960 mathematics and electrical engineering. He graduated an Arbor College in 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:13.800 nineteen thirty six and then went on to enroll in 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:19.120 graduate level study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:21.960 he decided upon m i T because he saw this 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.920 work study ad like pinned onto a physical bulletin board 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.640 on his college campus that was advertising for someone interested 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.920 in working on Vanavar Bush's differential analyzer, which was an 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:40.520 analog computer that used these physical mechanical connections to make calculations. 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.120 The deal here was that he would spend half his 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.520 time working towards his degree and the other half in 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.320 the lab with bush Um, who was then m i 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:51.000 t s vice president and also their dean of engineering. 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.599 So this was kind of sort of a big deal Um, 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:55.960 and this machine was huge. It was the system of 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.560 gears and pulleys and rods that calculated with an entire 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.680 range values that were based on the physical rotation of 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:07.040 the rods, and you could program it by physically rearranging 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.760 all of these mechanical bits to correspond with different equations 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.679 the control circuit. I mean that this is how early 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.800 this was in computing technology. The control circuit itself was 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:22.640 a system of some hundred electromagnetic switches. Yeah. This this 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.360 is a kind of the the evolution of what Charles 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.440 Babbage created way back in the day, the difference engine. 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.760 Uh so we've done the text us done episodes about 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.240 and a Lovelace, who was the first computer programmer she built. 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.880 She kind of saw that computers could be things that 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.359 could do more than just crunch numbers. They could analyze 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.480 any kind of data. Yeah, they could represent stuff that 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:53.599 isn't numbers as numbers, so that you could She had 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.080 this brilliant idea of, oh, a computer might be able 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.880 to represent something like a piece of music and be 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.520 able to create, you know, replicated in some way. Years 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:05.279 and years ahead of her time. And the computers of 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:11.440 those days were these giant analog actual machines. Yeah, sometimes manpowered. 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.599 Sometimes they had this electro mechanical element to it. So 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.200 we're predating the time of the electronic computer at this point, 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:23.479 so uh As Claude Shannon began to work on this machine, 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:25.560 you know now that he had had enrolled with M 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.200 I T. He noticed something interesting. He saw that the 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.719 switches corresponded with a concept he had started on studying 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.880 first as an undergraduate, and that was really focusing on, 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:41.160 which was symbolic logic. Now. I took symbolic logic in college. 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:45.480 I loved it because the basic idea of symbolic logic 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:51.039 is you reduce logical statements to mathematical statements. Actually, I 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.960 took a similar class. It was it was basically the 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.880 at least mathematical math class I could get away with 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.840 as an English major. Well, the neat thing about it 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:04.200 that if you could prove that it mathematically made sense, 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.240 then you could say that the statement is true right, 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:11.120 and if it does exactly so, you could you could 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.560 start to listen to your friends argue and sketch it out. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:18.679 And then he said, look, here's where you went wrong. 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:21.360 But at any rate, while he was at M I T. 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.200 He started really studying the work of a thinker named 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:28.640 George Boole, who was from the nineteenth century and back 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.800 in eighteen fifty four, George Bull published an investigation of 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.000 the laws of thought on which are founded the mathematical 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.200 theories of logic and probabilities, sometimes known as the laws 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.119 of the We usually shorten that to just laws of thought. 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:48.560 So this discussion about the mathematical theories of logic had 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.920 Bull using algebraic equations to represent logical forms and syllogisms, 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.360 which is exactly what you know I experienced when I 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.280 was in college. In this work, he also said that 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:02.480 the only i'd impotent numbers, which are numbers that can 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.480 be put through a certain operation multiple times without changing 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:09.800 the result, are zero and one. For example, one times 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.160 one equals one, and no matter how many times you 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.040 will multiply one by one, it will always be one. Right, 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:18.880 So if you take the product of that of that 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:21.680 that equation and then multiplied by itself, you still stay 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.440 with one, same thing with zero, although also with zero 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.720 you can add and subtract and still end up with zero. 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.200 So zero zero, zero, zero, so bool use zero and 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.120 one for the values of the symbols. In his algebraic logic, 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:37.480 he said an argument held in logic if when reduced 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.840 to an algebraic equation, it held in common algebra with 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.520 the zero one restriction of the possible interpretations of the symbols, 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.080 meaning that if you could replace the symbols with a 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:49.679 zero or a one and it's still made sense, it 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.520 still worked, then it held true. So Claude Shannon looked 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:56.240 at this and he was thinking, this is a really 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.000 cool idea. I love this, this approach to logic. And hey, 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.959 you know a switch has two positions on and off, 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.280 so sort of like a one in zero. Yeah, I 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:10.480 mean what if we were to, you know, kind of 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.400 so play with that, that whole switch process, And that 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:16.960 became something that would percolated in the back of his 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.280 head for a while. In fact, it percolated so long 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.079 that people suspect that he had fully formed this whole 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:29.440 idea of applying boolean logic to electronic devices for years 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.480 before writing it down, and once he wrote it out 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.240 and presented it, well, we'll get there. We'll get there. 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.040 I also do want to note that around this time 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.960 Shannon became interested in juggling, I think originally for like 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.320 physical mathematical purposes. He showed up, he started showing up 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:48.480 at the m I T Juggling Club, Juggling Club I 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.160 see what you did there, and asking some of its 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.240 members if he could like measure their juggling, and and 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:58.520 thereby sort of got involved with them, and this would 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.280 be a lifelong in trist As we will get into 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:03.079 a little bit later on a little bit of trivia. 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.240 A certain podcaster by the name of Jonathan Strickland was 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:12.400 a founding member of the University of Georgia Juggling Club. So, uh, 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:14.400 that's the only thing I really share in common with 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:19.000 claud I loved symbolic logic and I enjoyed juggling. They're 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:23.080 the comparison ends for he was far more intelligent than 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.720 I can ever hope to aspire. But yeah, you have 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:30.160 to agree with no, It's it's fine. I I have 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:34.080 come to grips with it. Okay. If you told me, hey, Jonathan, 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.040 you're never going to be as smart as say Claude 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:39.760 Shannon or Albert Einstein, it's alright. Most people won't be, 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:44.360 so I guess. Ninety eight, Claude Shannon writes a thesis 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:48.520 applying Bulls approach to circuitry by equating the zero one 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.440 restriction as the off and on positions of a switch 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.559 within a circuit. He was twenty two years old. This, 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.000 this had never been done. This has never been the 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.160 first time anyone had ever said this, certainly out loud, 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.200 and other thinkers have said that it would have taken 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.640 decades for anyone else to have come to this kind 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:10.120 of conclusion. Right, we could have been sort of groping 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:13.079 around with other approaches for years before someone had come 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:17.880 up with this particular version. And not only did he 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:20.080 come up with this idea, but the way he he 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:24.080 presented it in his thesis, it was very elegant, and 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.280 he would he would expand upon it a little bit later, 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.760 to the point where people said, this is this is 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.160 why he gets compared to Einstein. It's like Einstein saying 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:35.760 not just I figured out this one component to how 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.600 the universe works, but being able to express it elegantly 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:41.160 and have a whole picture right. Like it's like it's 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:45.000 not just a fact, it's a hill host of facts 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.520 that are all support one another. And it's like they say, 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.319 it's it's like you come up with a fundamental theory 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:56.480 of science and unfold it all at once. It's just so. 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.880 His thesis also laid out how logical functions such as 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.720 and or and not could be implemented within a physical circuit, 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:07.640 so building of logic gates. Now keep in mind this 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.600 is all in a hypothetical slash theoretical approach, right, It's 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.719 not like he was. He wasn't building this mechanically or 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.880 or electronically. That's the case. Maybe exactly, yeah, he was. 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.160 He was. He was laying out how this could be possible, 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.959 not actually building them himself. Claude Shannon leaves m I 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:27.880 T after earning a doctorate in mathematics to teach for 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.959 one year at Princeton Um. And here's the story. Has 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:34.760 a couple of different who has some alternate endings. We 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:36.360 will present you with the two that we know of. 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.679 But the story goes that he was teaching at Princeton 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:42.160 and while he was teaching a class he was holding 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:48.240 a lecture. Albert Einstein himself opened the door and stepped inside, 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.640 and Claude Shannon kept going on with a lecture, but 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.360 obviously was very much impressed with the fact that this 0:12:55.480 --> 0:13:00.319 genius has walked into his classroom. He sees I'm Stein 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.040 bend over and whisper something to one of the students 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.360 in the back. He sees that the student replies and 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.360 then he sees that Einstein quietly leaves the room. He 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.000 continues on with his lecture. At the end of the lecture, 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:15.240 he holds the student back and with great anticipation, asks 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:19.280 the student, what did this brilliant man have to say 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:23.440 about my lecture? And my version of the story was 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.839 that Einstein had very quietly asked the student where are 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:31.080 they currently serving tea? I've heard that he asked where 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.480 the men's room was, so it maybe there's where are 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:38.520 they currently allowing you to peet? Could possibly been at 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:42.520 any rate. Apparently that became one of Claude Shannon's favorite stories. 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:45.360 He would love to tell the story about how Albert 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.200 Einstein walked into his classroom and asked something completely not 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:51.560 connected with what he had to say, and that made 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:55.320 him like just tickled in it tickled it, And I thought, 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:57.400 well that that also tells you a lot about his 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:02.240 his personality that he did not take himself seriously. Yeah. Uh. 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:06.200 In nineteen forty one, he joined a company famous for 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:11.079 its research and development, Bell Telephone Labs, and his work 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:13.840 mostly focused on things that had to do with the 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.760 war effort. In this ninety one is World War two, 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:21.000 and it included anti aircraft devices that could calculate and 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:25.240 target counter missiles, which came pretty seriously in handy during 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:28.200 the German blitz on England. Yeah. Yeah, it turns out 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.800 if if your enemy is blasting you with missiles, counter 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:35.320 missiles are a high priority. He also got to work 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.680 in cryptography, so here's something where he's got a you know, 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.560 a connection with people like Alan Turing who was working 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.320 on cracking the Enigma machine back over in England. He 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:48.880 was now Claude Shannon was designed devices used by Allied 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:50.920 powers to send messages back and forth, so he was 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:55.040 looking at keeping Allied messages safe rather than cracking German 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:58.920 messages or access power messages. He later wrote a paper 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:03.840 about communication theory of secrecy systems, which, according to M. I. 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:07.680 T is generally credited with transforming cryptography from an art 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:11.160 to a science. UM it was a mathematical proof that 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:13.880 an encryption scheme called the one time pad or the 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.920 Vernon cipher is is unbreakable. And it's the that cipher 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:20.920 is the basic idea of encoding a message with a 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.640 random series of digits a key, as we have talked 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:27.560 about on the show before UM which both parties communicating 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.560 have a copy of But you know, this is a 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:35.880 very simple concept in cryptography, but having the mathematical proof 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.920 that it is in fact unbreakable if the system is, 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.160 then that's really awesome. And when we talked about the 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.400 Enigma machine, that was one of those systems that could 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:50.880 have been unbreakable had people actually been able to follow 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.640 the rules properly. But because there were two things that 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:56.840 really fell apart for the Enigma machine. And I know 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:58.400 this is a bit of a tangent, but it relates 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.160 to this. Yeah, those two things were. One, the Enigma 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.480 machine was designed so that no matter what the letter 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.600 you pressed would never light up as the same the 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:09.520 same letter would never light up as the letter that 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.480 you had pressed, So knowing that meant that you could 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:17.440 remove one variable from all the possible outcomes. Secondly, people 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:20.280 were not as careful with their log books, with their 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.880 code books as they needed to be um and that 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.120 that led to the code being broken. But everyone seems 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:28.880 to agree that had every had the Germans, had the 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:34.240 access powers, been incredibly careful, then that would have been 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:38.480 an unbreakable code. Of course, times of war, you can't 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:41.040 really do share in human error being what it is. Yeah, 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:44.280 I mean it's it's that's the difference between the ideal 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.960 and reality. Meanwhile, uh, Claude Shannon began to develop theories 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.520 on how to apply his ideas about bully and logic 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.080 and circuitry to telephone switching lines. Because of course he's 0:16:55.120 --> 0:17:00.080 working at Bell Labs in something else not involved of 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.360 in Claude Shannon happened that Bell Labs the development of 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:08.000 the transistor. Now, the transistor was a huge breakthrough. It 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.720 meant that the world of electronics could move away from 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:15.520 things like vacuum tubes and allow this other device to 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:20.639 take its place, essentially, which ultimately lead to the manatorization 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:25.040 of electronics. But it wouldn't be until Claude Shannon um 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:30.520 published his concepts about information theory that would let that 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:34.120 be a functional item in the way that it became. Yeah. Yeah, 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:38.160 it was really this idea of digitizing information that Shannon 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:43.520 had that made this a a practical device beyond just 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.080 especially that early transistor. It's enormous if you ever see 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:49.239 a picture of it, I think compared to the If 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.560 you think that billions of transistors can now fit on 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.000 a microprocessor chip, and then you look at the first 0:17:55.000 --> 0:18:00.119 one it's it's enormous difference. Obviously. Now, this idea of 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.480 digitizing information was pretty much what would allow the transistor 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.159 to become useful. And also it's what would lead to 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:11.959 things like encoding information onto storage media like uh, like 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:16.680 a compact disc. This is what would make not just uh, 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.920 processing data possible, but storing it. Yeah, and right, it's 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:22.920 it's kind of a really beautiful coincidence that both of 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.840 these technologies were being developed at Bell Labs within a 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.399 year of each other. As it turns out, because in 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:35.439 that is when claudean and actually published his paper Mathematical 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:39.320 Theory of Communication. Yes, and that's available in PDF form. 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.080 Will will share the link because you can actually read 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.480 his paper on information theory. And this is the one 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.720 that I said earlier that you know, people, people who 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.199 were information theory experts, they say like, this is this 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.600 is like Einstein coming out with the theories of relativity. 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.680 This idea of a complete picture, not just an idea, 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:01.399 but a complete picture of an approach that laid the 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:08.240 groundwork for digitizing information so it can be transmitted and stored. Now, again, 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:10.840 he was a theorist. He did not build this. He 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.280 explained how it is mathematically possible, right, and so it 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:18.760 left it up to engineers and computer scientists to figure out, Okay, 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.520 if this is theoretically possible, how do we make it real? 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.640 What do we do to actually put this stuff into 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.440 into reality and have it work for us? Uh? Now 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.160 was when it was published, But there are people who 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:35.520 have looked into Claude Shannon's life who say that he 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:39.200 may have had this fully formed as early as ninety three, 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:41.160 and he thought that it was a really cool idea, 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:43.600 but just didn't think, you know, no one else is 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.000 going to care about this. I would, I would argue. 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:48.720 I mean, from from what I've read, it sounded to 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:50.879 me more like he kind of had it brewing and 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.680 just didn't want to present it until it was done. 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:56.159 He did seem like the kind of person who he 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.280 wanted to make sure that he had as complete a 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.840 picture of an idea as possible before presenting it to 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.639 anyone else. He did not want to have the experience 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:11.040 of coming forward with just half an idea. So yeah, 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.040 he's kind of a perfectionist in that sense. And it 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:19.000 really is a challenge to explain just to an average 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:23.119 person exactly how important this theory was, but you know, 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:25.399 in a in a practical sense at the time that 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:27.639 he was coming up with this, it was necessary to 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.879 create a better telephone system. So in the old analog 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:35.439 telephone system, you've got some pretty big limitations, some some 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.400 barriers you've got to get across due to signal loss 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:42.600 or noise, and analog telephone signal gets weaker the longer 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.320 that the telephone line it's traveling along is. Yeah, so 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.359 in order to get around that, engineers would place amplifiers 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.000 along a telephone line to boost the signal. So you 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.800 get a weak signal coming in, it goes through the amplifier, 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.679 the signals boosted, it's stronger going out. But unfortunately, um 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.280 the along with the signal that you want to get staid, 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:02.760 all of the noise that's on the line also gets boosted. 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:05.320 So eventually you run out I mean, I mean just 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.800 the noise takes over. Yeah, Yeah, you lose the signal 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:09.520 in the noise. So that would be you know, if 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:13.520 you've ever heard like one of those those telephone conversations 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.880 that goes on in an old movie where it's just 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:19.720 like all you hear is cracked, like yeah, just imagine 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:22.160 that if you're far enough away that all you would 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:23.840 get was the stack. You would not get any voice 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:28.040 at all. So, uh, the interesting thing was that by 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:32.320 switching from analog signals to digital signals, they didn't have 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.119 to worry about the signal boosting problem. Instead of a 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:37.800 continuous signal like a sign wave, which is, you know, 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.520 an acoustic wave, is what you would get with an 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:44.520 analog telephone line, digital signals are sent in a series 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:46.920 of bits, and a bit is either a zero or 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.119 a one. That's all based off of Claude Shannon's application 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:54.320 of Boolean algebra to electronics, and it worked so you 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.000 could do this with telephones, which was great, but it 0:21:57.119 --> 0:21:59.120 meant you could also do it with just about any 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:03.760 other kind of nation transfer from radio to telegraph, telephones, everything. 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:06.760 And again this was one of those things that could 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:09.240 not immediately be implemented. The engineers had to build the 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:13.680 technology sporting. But once they did, they realized, we can 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:18.480 build out a nationwide telephone, even a global telephone system 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.280 that doesn't require amplifiers every x number of miles because 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:26.280 you're never going to lose that that signal clarity, all right, 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:30.320 Like hypothetically, you can do this with literally zero loss 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.359 in quality. So so long as you don't mind taking 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.240 the necessary amount of time for each bit to be transferred, 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:39.240 really the transfer speed is the only cap that you're 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:42.440 working with at this junction, exactly. And Claude Shannon he 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:45.040 kind of came up with that too. He said, uh, 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:48.879 you know, if if we have an infinite amount of time, 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:54.720 you'll have zero signal laws. But that any medium of 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:58.680 transmission is going to have ultimately a cap of how 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:01.720 much data it can care y at any given within 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:05.720 a given amount of time. So it was interesting because 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:07.679 that was one of those things that ended up becoming 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:12.400 a challenge to engineers. He said, look, for whatever medium 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:15.920 you choose, it's and it's specific to each medium. You're 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:18.600 going to have this limit that you're going to hit 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.120 and you can't go beyond it. And the engineer said, 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:23.199 all right, we agree, there's no way we can go 0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:25.440