Moore Shannon Claude (4 results)

Wraps. Condition: Near Fine. First Separate Edition. First Separate Edition. 4 pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches (275 x 213 mm) Publisher's printed grey, blue and black wrappers, stapled. Five holes punched at the spine as issued. Crease to lower right corner of wrapper. Wraps. The Proceedings of the I. R. E., Vol 41, October 1953 (pp.1348-1351 of the famous Computer Issue) first published this paper. Here offered in the Bell Telephone Systems Monograph Series (#2153: March 1954). We are not aware of any separate IRE offprint for this paper. Unless one is discovered this format constitutes the first separate edition. A significant part of the design engineer's job is how to efficiently and cost-effectively build a project. This paper describes a purpose-built machine (the relay circuit analyzer) that can remove unnecessary components while testing a circuit against its design requirements. The circuit analyzer design, while extensible, has a straightforward design and is explained using the simplest case. "The design of circuits composed of logical elements may be facilitated by auxiliary machines. This paper describes one such machine, made of relays, selector switches, gas diodes, and germanium diodes. This machine (called the relay circuit analyzer) has as inputs both a relay contact circuit and the specifications the circuit is expected to satisfy. The analyzer (1) verifies whether the circuit satisfies the specifications, (2) makes systematic attempts to simplify the circuit by removing redundant contacts, and also (3) obtains mathematically rigorous lower bounds for the numbers and types of contacts needed to satisfy the specifications. A special feature of the analyzer is its ability to take advantage of circuit specifications that are incompletely stated. The auxiliary machine method of doing these and similar operations is compared with the method of coding them on a general-purpose digital computer." (from the Summary) "Whether or not this particular kind of machine ever proves to be useful in the design of practical relay circuits, the possibility of making machines which can assist in logical design procedure promises to be of value to everyone associated with the design of switching circuits. Just as the slide rule and present-day types of digital computers can help perform part of the routine work associated with the design of linear electrical networks, machines such as this may someday lighten much of the routine work associated with the design of logical circuits." (from the Conclusion) It was a brilliant idea and prescient. Today software replaces the mechanical implementation, but the idea is fundamentally the same. Computer-aided design in manufacturing plays a significant role in constructing and testing complex circuits like computer processors, which would be very difficult to test otherwise. PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were many examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #80 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #886 COLLECTORS NOTE: The Bell Telephone System Monograph series offered a way to obtain individual articles by Bell scientists regardless of where their work was first published. Many Monographs significantly postdate the original article publication. Because of this, they rarely constitute the coveted (and traditional) article offprint. If the journal of record issued no offprint, the Monograph might be the first separate publication - the closest the collector can come to a traditional offprint. We have done our best to place each Monograph properly in the article's publishing history and welcome any corrections or additional information, especially regarding issues unknown to us.

Wraps. Condition: Near Fine. Later printing. Later printing. 1-35, [1-blank] pages. 275 x 213 mm (10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches). Original wrappers printed in grey, light blue, and black. Stapled, with five holes punched at the spine, as issued. A nice clean copy, noting a touch of wear to the wrappers and a soft crease to the rear panel corner. Wraps. The "Journal of the Franklin Institute" first published the two articles collected in this item. "Reliable Circuits Using Less Reliable Relays Part I," in Vol. 262 (Sept. 1956), pp. 191-208 and "Reliable Circuits Using Less Reliable Relays Part II," in Vol. 262, (October 1956), pp 281-297. We are not aware of individual offprints of either paper. However, in October 1956, the "Journal of the Franklin Institute" did publish an offprint containing the first collected edition of these papers. The "Bell Telephone System Technical Publications Monograph" series, #2696: Jan 1957) [as here] constitutes a later printing of the collected edition. "An investigation is made of relays whose reliability can be described in simple terms by means of probabilities. It is shown that by using a sufficiently large number of these relays in the proper manner, circuits can be built which are arbitrarily reliable, regardless of how unreliable the original relays are. Various properties of these circuits are elucidated." (abstract). Shannon and Moore immediately credit von Neumann for his work on Sheffer stroke engines, naming that as the inspiration for this paper. They then proceed to perform a similar analysis to relays. They are able to go further than von Neumann in several areas: 1) their methods can be applied to arbitrarily poor relays; 2) they reduce the overall redundancy of a specific von Neumann case from "60,000 to 1" to "67 to 1," a great improvement, and ; 3) "with the systems described here, this final probability of error can approach zero." The authors note, "This paper is not intended for practical design purposes, but rather for theoretical and mathematical insight into the problem. There may, however, be some practical applications." Applications discussed include large-scale computing machines and areas where human safety is dependent on extreme reliability. They caution that the results are not directly applicable because they used idealized relays whose probability of failure is constant over time, rather than real-world relays that gradually wear out. A working title for this paper was "Reliable Circuits Using Crummy Relays," which we think is fabulous, but it was changed at the behest of Bell Labs for obvious reasons! PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were six examples of this item in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #89 and #90. COLLECTORS NOTE: The Bell Telephone System Monograph series offered a way to obtain individual articles by Bell scientists regardless of where their work was first published. Many Monographs significantly postdate the original article publication. Because of this, they rarely constitute the coveted (and traditional) article offprint. If the journal of record issued no offprint, the Monograph might be the first separate publication - the closest the collector can come to a traditional offprint. We have done our best to place each Monograph properly in the article's publishing history and welcome any corrections or additional information, especially regarding issues unknown to us.

Wraps. Condition: Very Good. [1-cover sheet], [1-abstract], [1]-14 leaves + 4 plates (2 folding). Stapled upper left. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches. Reproduced typescript. Plate slightly larger at 11 x 8 1/2 inches. The main text leaves and abstracts have fours holes punched at the spine. The plates in the rear are not hole punched. There is some mild paper toning and fold creasing to the rear pages near the staple. Wraps. The Proceedings of the I. R. E., Vol 41, pp. 1348-1351, October 1953 first published a description of the Relay Circuit Analyzer under the title "Machine Aid for Switching Circuit Design." The Bell Laboratories Monograph series (#2159: March 1954) also published that description. We were delighted to discover this internal Bell Laboratories Memorandum, "The Relay Circuit Analyzer - Case 22108," among Shannon's files. It not only precedes the first public description in the Proceedings of the IRE by several months, but it includes much additional material, including (importantly) circuit designs not found in the IRE or the Bell Monograph descriptions. It appears Bell Labs wanted the design all to themselves. And the distribution list of eighty-nine Bell System scientists proves how widely it was valued. The public description contains a reproduced photograph of a nicely machined, professional-looking front panel. In contrast, we love that this Memorandum shows the front panel of the Relay Circuit Analyzer constructed from unadorned plywood with stickers for labels on the buttons and switches. Exactly what you'd expect for a laboratory-grown and tested machine. Shannon's brilliant 1938 master's thesis proves that logical designs can be unambiguously constructed in electrical circuits. Design engineers then and now are tasked with how efficiently they can build a machine - fewer components keep costs down and complexity to a minimum. The Relay Circuit Analyzer took this theory one step further, using a purpose-built machine to remove unnecessary elements while testing a circuit against its design requirements. "This memorandum describes a machine (made of relays, selector switches, gas diodes, and germanium diodes) for analyzing several properties of any combinational relay circuit which uses four relays or fewer. This machine, called the relay circuit analyzer, . can (1) verify whether the circuit satisfies the specifications, (2) make certain kinds of attempts to reduce the number of contacts used, and also (3) perform rigorous mathematical proofs which give lower bounds for the numbers and types of contacts required to satisfy given specifications." (abstract) "This paper [ Machine Aid for switching circuit design ] describes the first 'verification' machine, built at Bell Labs and called the 'relay circuit analyzer.' The machine 'verifies whether a circuit satisfies given logical specifications and also makes a systematic attempt to reduce the circuit to simplest form." (Origins of Cyberspace) PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). The only complete example in Shannon's files. REFERENCES: Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #74 and #80 Hook and Norman, "Origins of Cyberspace," #886 (referring to the 1953 IRE paper "Machine aid for switching circuit design").

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine condition. NOT a library discard (illustrator). First Edition. New York: The Institute of Radio Engineers, 1953. This volume of Proceedings of the IRE includes the "Computer Issue" [Vol. 41, No.10, October 1953, pp. 1,217 - 1,568]. The "Computer Issue" contains 41 papers on the subject of electronic computers, the most significant of which are described in Hook and Norman's ORIGINS OF CYBERSPACE. [See Hook and Norman entries Nos. 508, 513, 626, 641, 664, 672, 871, 885-886]. Among the authors in this "Computer Issue" are Werner Buchholz, Arthur W. Burks & Jesse B. Wright; Clarence E. Frizzell, Sidney Greenwald, Grace Murray Hopper, Thorenson Huskey, Harold D. Ross, Claude E. Shannon & Edward F. Moore. The "Computer Issue" is one of 6 consecutive monthly issues bound together. They consist of Volume 41, July - December (#7 - 12) 1953, pages 833 - 1,818. HARDCOVER. NOT a library discard. Near Fine condition. NO owner's name or bookplate. Pages are clean and unmarked - probably never read. Institute of Radio Engineers. Original front wraps are bound in. The binding is sturdy blue buckram, stamped in bright gold on the spine. Oversize Hardcover. 8.75" wide by 11" tall by 1.75" thick. This large heavy book will require extra postage for Priority and International shipments, but only the standard charge for media mail. SEE Hook and Norman's ORIGINS OF CYBERSPACE 675, 508, 513, 626, 641, 664, 672, 871, 885-886. First Edition. Oversize Hardcover. Near Fine condition. Illus. by NOT a library discard. pp. 833 - 1,818 [985 total pages]. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.